About

In the years following his rise, Misch backed away from music entirely. Burnout crept in. So did a growing sense of lost identity tied to incessant output. He quietly left the studio behind and immersed himself in the rhythm of everyday life. ‘Full Circle’ was born from an extended period of living at home, reconnecting with family, and rediscovering who he was before tour schedules and industry expectation. It’s a familiar enough trope in contemporary artistry but ‘Full Circle’ distinguishes itself from the crowd in how thoroughly it internalised that break. Rather than tout a triumphant return, Misch opts for a soft re-entry. The result is a record that feels rooted. In its sense of self, yes, but also in the relationships and environments that sustained him during that break. — (via CLASH)

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Misch wrote these songs on piano and guitar first, then brought them to Nashville, where Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian helped develop them with a live band and tape machines and a vintage Neumann U47 microphone. The north star he cites is the kind of 1970s singer-songwriter LP your parents owned on vinyl. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, John Martyn, JJ Cale. The leap is steep. On “Old Man,” Misch sings about noticing grey hairs and seeing his father’s face in the mirror, imagining a great-great-great-grandson catching flights long after he’s gone. The melody is spare and the lyric is plain, and neither of those things are weaknesses. There’s nothing between you and what he’s saying. “This dressing room is all I know,” he admits in the second verse, and the line carries the resignation of someone taking stock of the only life he’s had.

The love songs scatter in different directions. “Red Moon” asks a celestial body to intervene with a woman whose heart he can’t reach on his own, and the pleading has a formality to it, an old-fashioned quality, a man on his knees talking to the sky. “Slow Tonight” is the opposite. It opens on a Friday night, sirens and flashing lights, then snaps domestic:

“You say, ‘I don’t like your friends that much’
Well, I love them all if it’s once a month
When we’re alone, I just can’t get enough
It may be unhealthy, I don’t give a fuck.”

That’s the loosest, funniest moment on the album, and it’s also the most uptempo. “Goldie” drops the humor completely. Someone pulled him out of a terrible place, and he can barely articulate the gratitude beyond naming it. “I started to think that you didn’t exist/Who the hell do I thank for this” is the closest Misch gets to overwhelmed on the whole record, and his voice stays level through it.

“Sultan of Silence” closes the album’s emotional argument without closing it. The song paints a figure who never speaks “(He walks where echoes die/He knows the weight of every stone”). A father, a mentor, a version of himself he hasn’t become yet. It doesn’t explain. “Days of Us,” with Kaidi Akinnibi’s saxophone weaving through a two-voice conversation about distance, is the only collaborative one, and it earns its placement because two people are genuinely talking past each other. “Can’t you stay?/Let’s meet halfway,” says one voice. “Despite the rain,/Can’t we try?” says the other. They want the same thing and can’t agree on how to get there. Misch recorded the saxophone part back at Unwound Studios in Deptford, when Akinnibi dropped by and started playing. That looseness, someone walking in, and the tape rolling, is Full Circle in miniature. The record bets that a song written on guitar and sung in a clear, unadorned voice can carry the weight of a person’s worst years, and the bet is a good one. — (via Shattered Standards)

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Label: Beyond The Groove
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2026
Genre: Rock, Funk / Soul, Folk, World, Country

File under: Funk / Soul
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