From the album’s announcement press release:
“Leading up to us hitting the studio, Sam and I were sharing an apartment together and we just got into this great creative rhythm,” says Matt Quinn about the songwriting process before hitting the studio. “Bouncing ideas off of each other, salvaging little acoustic snippets. Jackie and the rest of the band would come over and help build a real architecture around these ideas — putting together parts that now feel instrumental to these compositions. It felt like a real collective, heartening effort.”
An album about finding ways to work past one’s emotional and mental struggles with intentionality, Rearrange Us showcases the young band’s growing ambition and sonic experimentation. “My Vibe, Your Vibe” blends psychedelic affirmations with a rootsy stomp and a swirl of synthesizers, while “Come With Me” goes from a decayed choral elegy to a breezy, Allen Toussaint-indebted barn-burner — a battle cry for pushing yourself to have a good time amid new company. And “Have Faith,” a southern gospel-influenced duet with singer Liz Vice, exemplifies the band’s newfound range and Matt Quinn’s emergent songwriting prowess. The resulting album is a triumph of spirit and self-knowledge: Matt Quinn’s songwriting is at once more painterly and less precise, like perfectly rendered vignettes from a largely disjointed memory of a dream.
“Tucker Martine’s such a wizard with sound, and he’s got an incredible ear for song structure,” says Matt Quinn. “We knew we were getting somewhere when we’d finish a take and he’d say ‘I felt things.’ It was a good barometer that we were on track and creating something that felt meaningful.”
At first a vehicle for singer / songwriter Matt Quinn’s bedroom recordings, Mt. Joy’s swift rise is the stuff of childhood daydreams. The unexpected streaming success of debut single “Astrovan” thrust the band — Quinn, guitarist Sam Cooper, bassist Michael Byrnes, drummer Sotiris Eliopoulos, and keyboardist Jackie Miclau — into the itinerant musician’s lifestyle: performances at big name festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, press notices in Rolling Stone (who deemed them “your new folk-rock heroes”), and dates touring with the likes of The Shins, Whitney, The Head and The Heart, and Neko Case.
They signed with Dualtone Records, and their self-titled debut album Mt. Joy was “a major breakthrough” (Billboard), earning the band over 2 million monthly Spotify listeners. Single “Silver Lining” hit #1 on the AAA Radio Charts, with “Jenny Jenkins” following it up by reaching #5. New fans — earned ear-by-ear with every tour stop, festival set, early morning radio session, and moment of internet discovery — were singing along at sold out club dates.
