When Joan Of Arc announced its first album in five years, He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands, it sounded as if there had been a gap in the band’s creativity. While that’s partially true, it understates the fact that Joan Of Arc is always mutating, experimenting with new sounds, collaborators, and approaches. Last year, Joan Of Arc’s de facto leader, Tim Kinsella, took part in Joyful Noise’s Artist In Residence series, where he released an assemblage of new records, some of which featured past versions of Joan Of Arc offering up their first new material in a decade.
Today The A.V. Club is premiering “Full Moon And Rainbo Repair,” a song from He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands that serves as a tribute to Chicago, the city that’s been Joan Of Arc’s home throughout its two-decade existence. The song, like so many of the band’s best, eschews traditional song structure in favor of riffing on an idea, exploring a single thought in every way possible. Of the song, Kinsella had this to say:
Everyone that’s ever been in a band knows how funny the first, thrown-off, working title of a song can be compared to what that song evolves into. This song is forever known between us as “Jay Z.” The seed of the song was Melina’s first ever guitar riff. And we wanted to make a sort of love song to Chicago, anthem kind of thing. But it ended up tilting toward being a love song about Chicago. I imagine the man singing it somewhere between Steve Buscemi’s character on Boardwalk Empire and Van Morrison’s “Linden Arden.”
Pre-orders for He’s Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands are available now through Joyful Noise.
Joan Of Arc tour dates
1/21—Chicago Athletic Association—Chicago, IL
1/24—The Hi-Fi—Indianapolis, IN
1/25—Big Room Bar—Columbus, OH
1/26—Metro Gallery—Baltimore, MD
1/27—Great Scott—Allston, MA
1/29—Mercury Lounge—New York, NY
1/30—Strange Matter—Richmond, VA
1/31—The Pinhook—Durham, NC
2/1—Drunken Unicorn—Atlanta, GA
2/2—Spanish Moon—Baton Rouge, LA
2/3—Three Links—Dallas, TX
2/4—Barracuda—Austin, TX
2/6—Valley Bar—Phoenix, AZ
2/7—191 Toole—Tucson, AZ
2/8—Che Cafe Collective—La Jolla, CA
2/9—The Satellite—Los Angeles, CA
2/10—The Crepe Place—Santa Cruz, CA
2/11—Bottom of the Hill—San Francisco, CA
2/13—Analog Cafe—Portland, OR
2/14—The Vera Project—Seattle, WA
3/4—Daytrotter Festival—Davenport, IA
3/5—Dionysus—Oberlin, OH