No one ever stopped to consider the other astronaut, floating out there in his own private darkness, so cut off in his suit he might as well be alone. And, more importantly, no one considered his wife, the wife of the lesser astronaut, the one who doesn’t get mentioned as much, just as alone on earth. Sitting in a slightly more modest home across town, with all the same channels, her own hand on the remote just waiting to catch a glimpse of her husband, her story too is worth telling. But is it any different?

Picking up where the debut LP left off, The Other Astronaut’s Wife starts with a Tim Burton style ‘re-imagining’ of the final track. Instead of a room full of drunks pounding away on earth, we hear the song from inside the astronaut’s helmet, getting intimate with the pounding and the voices in his head.

The following three tracks are new. They chart the astronaut’s reentry back into the atmosphere, his inability to return to normal life and his eventual demise, perhaps through the eyes of his wife, perhaps we’re looking too much into it. But it’s nice to think of it as a 16 minute life, from birth in the stars to death in a car. Or maybe it all happens in a single moment, a fleeting thought inspired by a glimpse of earth from the heavens.

All of this to say—new songs by Shadows on a River. Thank you for listening.