Sarah Jarosz

Four-time GRAMMY winner Sarah Jarosz has announced her new album, Polaroid Lovers. The record is set for release on January 26th, 2024 via Rounder Records. To mark the occasion she has shared the album opener, “Jealous Moon,” and its companion video. The song finds Jarosz backed by a decidedly more electric band, with her Texas lilt as clear and evocative as ever. Polaroid Lovers is available for pre-order today digitally and on vinyl with gray, lavender, orange and green splatter variants. Indie retailers will also have a special blue and green splatter vinyl. For more information visit https://store.sarahjarosz.com/

Sarah Jarosz on “Jealous Moon” I wrote this song with Daniel Tashian in Monteagle, TN on a screened in porch with birds chirping all around. It was a warm summer afternoon. It started as a quiet melody on ukulele and nylon string guitar, but when we got to the studio it became something much more powerful. It’s a song about the times when the parts of ourselves that we try to keep hidden rise to the surface and we have no choice but to ride the wave. Sometimes that means doing your own thing to figure it out so you can emerge stronger on the other side. It’s not about the end of a relationship, but rather a moment of self reflection and a promise to keep showing up even when things get tough. Once Daniel played the opening riff on piano I knew it had to open the album. I’m always seeking to push myself into new sonic territory, and this song gave me permission to not hold back.

The seventh album from Sarah Jarosz finds the highly decorated songwriter at the apex of change. A Texas native, she’s spent most of her adult life living in New York City, but shortly before writing the album Jarosz left her adopted home to join her soon-to-be husband in Nashville, TN. The geographic shake-up led to a sonic one as well for Polaroid Lovers. For the first time in her career she opened herself up to collaborators, leading to writing sessions with Daniel Tashian, Ruston Kelly and Natalie Hemby. The creative reorganization of her writing process evolved to include a much richer and more electric sound in the studio and being in Nashville meant access to a world of hot shot players. She tapped guitarist Rob McNelley (Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood), Tom Bukovac (Tom Petty, Vince Gill) on guitar and organ, her husband- bassist Jeff Picker (Nickel Creek), and drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams) for the album recording. Tashian took the helm as producer and the whole album was laid down at the legendary Sound Emporium.

As it goes with all change, Jarosz’s major life events had her feeling contemplative. While sitting on the precipice of adulthood, Polaroid Lovers finds her reflecting on past loves, childhood dreams, the places she lived in and all the versions of herself that she’s been. Although the listener experiences the sonic shift forward, the album’s subject matter is a photo album of the past. Jarosz has never sounded more assured. Polaroid Lovers is filled with the kind of confidence that comes from hard won life experiences and the conviction of someone who truly knows herself.

Sarah Jarosz released her debut album at the age of 18 and was immediately nominated for her first GRAMMY. Raised in Texas, she began playing mandolin at age 10 and soon after guitar and banjo. To date, she has released six studio albums, has netted ten GRAMMY Nominations and four wins. In 2018, she joined Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek and Aoife O’Donovan to form the supergroup, I’m With Her. The group released their debut album See You Around, and won duo/group of the year at the Americana Awards. Their song, “Call My Name” won the GRAMMY for Best American Roots song.

More About Sarah Jarosz and Polaroid Lovers:

The seventh full-length from four-time Grammy Award-winner Sarah Jarosz, Polaroid Lovers is an album-long meditation on those strangely ephemeral moments that indelibly shape our lives. “What I love about a Polaroid is that it’s capturing something so fleeting, but at the same time it makes that moment last forever,” says the Texas-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. “It made sense as a title for a record where all the songs are snapshots of different love stories, and there’s a feeling of time being expansive despite that impermanence.” Thanks to the rarefied alchemy that infuses all of Jarosz’s output — her finely wrought lyricism, ravishing vocal work, virtuosic yet unfettered musicality — Polaroid Lovers performs the much-needed magic of leading us toward a heightened sense of presence, all while casting a lovely spell with her timelessly powerful songs.

The follow-up to 2020’s studio album World on the Ground (winner of the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album) and 2021’s song cycle Blue Heron Suite, Polaroid Lovers embodies a bold new vitality that has much to do with a deliberate shift in Jarosz’s writing process and sonic approach. “Historically I’ve been somewhat closed off to co-writing, but in the past couple of years I’ve felt curious to get out of my comfort zone,” says the newly Nashville-based artist, who released her debut album at just 18-years-old. “For a long time it was important to me to write for myself, so that I wouldn’t get lost in those rooms full of amazing writers. But now that I’m more confident in my musical identity, I know I can collaborate but still stay true to my own voice.” In one of her first co-writing sessions for Polaroid Lovers, Jarosz joined forces with Daniel Tashian (a songwriter/musician/producer known for his multi-award-winning work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour) and immediately felt an undeniable creative connection. “Daniel and I were both so excited by the idea of creating a new sound together, and he pushed me in ways I felt completely ready for and open to,” she says. “It felt really good to allow myself that freedom, and to take that leap into something new.”

Produced by Tashian at the legendary Sound Emporium, Polaroid Lovers took shape as Jarosz recorded live with musicians like guitarist Rob McNelley (Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood), Tom Bukovac (Tom Petty, Vince Gill) on guitar and organ, her husband bassist Jeff Picker (Nickel Creek), and drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams), carving out a viscerally potent but resplendent brand of folk-rock. Along with layering in such delicately crafted details as otherworldly textures and luminous synth tones, Jarosz and Tashian forged the album’s singular sound by foregrounding her spirited performance on octave mandolin. “Out of everything I play, the octave mandolin is definitely my soulmate,” says Jarosz, who first took up mandolin at age nine, quickly gained major acclaim in the bluegrass world, and also plays guitar and banjo throughout Polaroid Lovers. “I started playing it when I was 16, and that’s when I started writing songs that truly felt like me — there’s something about the tonality that really lets my voice shine through.”

With her co-writers on Polaroid Lovers also including artists like Ruston Kelly, Natalie Hemby, and Sarah Buxton as well as heavy-hitters like Jon Randall (Miranda Lambert, Emmylou Harris) and Gordie Sampson (Willie Nelson, Trisha Yearwood), Jarosz opens the album on “Jealous Moon”: a gloriously soaring and exquisitely nuanced track that instantly sweeps the listener up in its bristling emotionality. “That song is about the parts of ourselves that we try to keep hidden, and the moments when they rise to the surface and we just have to ride the wave,” says Jarosz, who co-wrote “Jealous Moon” with Tashian on a trip to his family’s summer house in Monteagle, Tennessee. “Daniel and I call it our little Monteagle song that could — it started off with me playing ukulele and him playing nylon-string guitar on the porch, then blossomed into this very powerful song that knocked me off my feet.”

Next, on “When the Lights Go Out,” Jarosz shares the sweetly lilting reverie that gave the album its title (from the first verse: “In a dream we were Polaroid lovers/In the deep where the edges don’t lie”). “I wrote that song with Jon Randall and Gordie Sampson, who suggested we try something in a 6/8 time signature — which is such a simple idea, but took us in a direction I might never have gone otherwise,” she says. “To me the lyrics are a way of asking someone you’re intrigued by, ‘Who are you when all the shine and attention isn’t on you anymore? Who are you really?'” Another track co-written with Randall, “Runaway Train” kicks the album into high gear as Jarosz serves up a bright and soulful love song built on a wildly sing-along-ready chorus (“You’ve got a heart like a runaway train/Screaming down the mountainside/Burning like a fever that you can’t contain/Humming like the 405″).”Coming out of the pandemic and playing shows again, I realized that a lot of the more uptempo songs in my set were covers,” she says. “I wanted to write a love song that would give people that joyful feeling, and Jon and I had so much fun playing with all those images of California and Colorado and Texas Hill Country, which is where I grew up.”

One of the most poignant moments on Polaroid Lovers, “Columbus & 89th” drifts into a dreamlike beauty as Jarosz reflects on the ineffable heartache of leaving her longtime home of New York City back in 2020. “New York signified this childhood dream that I’d had for so long, so moving to Nashville was like turning the page from youth to adulthood,” she says. “‘Columbus & 89th’ ended up just pouring out of me once Daniel and I started working on it —there was so much nostalgia and melancholy that I needed to process, and now I still tear up whenever I hear it. As a songwriter my main goal is to tell the truth about my experience, and I think the fact that that song makes me so emotional means that I was tapping into real feeling.” Written on the same trip that yielded “Columbus & 89th” (a journey to Alabama’s Orange Beach with Tashian’s family), “Days Can Turn Around” unfolds as a gently swaying folk song threaded with warmly delivered instruction for living well no matter what the circumstances (e.g., “Never turn down cold champagne/Don’t change your plans for a little rain”). “Both of those songs have similar themes of thinking back and looking forward, but trying your best to be in the moment,” says Jarosz. “With ‘Days Can Turn Around,’ I wanted to talk about all those little gems of wisdom you hear from you parents that end up taking on a whole new meaning when you finally become an adult.”

As Jarosz reveals, her very first co-writing session with Tashian helped draw out the deep-rooted confidence that informed all of the album’s creation. “That first day Daniel and I worked together we wrote a song called ‘Take the High Road,’ which is about taking the time to really know yourself and get comfortable in your own skin, even if it might take a little longer to get to where you want to be,” she says. “There was something so beautiful about that being the first song we wrote for this album — it gave me the push I needed to not be afraid, to move beyond the boundaries and explore new sounds.” A widely beloved musician whose past efforts include teaming up with fellow singer/songwriters Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan to form the Grammy Award-winning trio I’m With Her — as well as appearing on albums by iconic artists like David Crosby and Amy Ray of Indigo Girls — Jarosz derived a particularly profound sense of purpose from the highly collaborative process behind Polaroid Lovers. “Maybe more than any record I’ve ever made, I felt so present and hyper-emotional with this album because I believed in it so much,” she says. “It was so joyful to work with all these writers and musicians, and I think that joy really comes through.”

Looking back on the making of Polaroid Lovers, Jarosz notes that shaking up her process ultimately left her eager to further expand her creative horizons. “It was a big step for me to reach out to Daniel, but in the end it showed me how important it is to keep taking thoughtful chances,” she says. “This whole album reminded me that I never want to play it safe — if anything, I want there to always be that element of being a little scared, because that means I’m taking a risk. In a way that’s what’s so wonderful about art: if you’re lucky, you never reach the finish line. You just keep searching and chiseling away at the stone, and putting everything you can into making something that tells the truth but hopefully leaves space for others to find meaning too.”

With her fourth album, Undercurrent, Sarah Jarosz makes a studied departure from her previous records, shifting the emphasis from her skills as a multi-instrumentalist to her songwriting and vocal performance. Undercurrent accentuates the growth and maturity that Jarosz, now 25, has achieved since graduating from New England Conservatory and moving to New York City. The change in approach garnered Jarosz two Grammy Awards in 2017-for Best Folk Album Year for Undercurrent and for Best American Roots Performance for “House Of Mercy”. She also picked up the award for 2017 Folk Album of the Year from Folk Alliance International for Undercurrent.

On Undercurrent, Jarosz delivers a set of all-original songs, centered around four solo pieces that set the tone of the record. Uncut Magazine describes it as “an enthralling journey from source to mouth,” and goes on to say “These are songs about the choices we make, the paths we take and the things we leave behind, a deep meditation on the invisible currents that guide us.” The Wall Street Journal notes “This economical approach brings the listener closer to Ms. Jarosz than on any of her previous recordings, and it suits the lyrical theme of passion that, mostly, is forbidden and unrequited.”

The Austin Chronicle’s Jim Caligiuri declared “For Austinites who’ve followed her since her early teens, the fact that Wimberley native Sarah Jarosz blossomed into one of the most stirring musicians of her generation comes as absolutely no surprise,” while Consequence of Sound”s Michelle Geslani noted the “startling sense of insight” in Jarosz’s compositions. NPR’s Katie Presley made note of Jarosz’s newfound maturity, praising her “uncharacteristically (and deliciously) unyielding” vocal carriage.

“I really like that word,” Sarah Jarosz says of the title of Undercurrent, her fourth Sugar Hill album. “If you look up the definition, it’s ‘an underlying feeling or influence’ or ‘a flow of water moving below the surface.’ To me, that really encompasses the feeling behind this record.”

That evocative imagery is appropriate for Undercurrent, whose 11 original songs seem to reveal new lyrical depth and sonic nuance with every listen. A gifted multi-instrumentalist, a singularly expressive vocalist and a songwriter of rare insight, Sarah Jarosz has been described by The New York Times as “one of acoustic music’s most promising young talents: a singer-songwriter and mandolin and banjo prodigy with the taste and poise to strike that rare balance of commercial and critical success.”

Although it’s her fourth album, Undercurrent is a milestone for Jarosz in more ways than one. It’s her first release since graduating with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music, and her first since relocating to New York City.

“This is the first record I’ve made since being out on my own and experiencing a lot of changes, and I think that that’s reflected in the songs,” Jarosz explains. “It’s also the first record I’ve ever made that feels to me like a complete thought, with a beginning, a middle and an ending. It’s also the first time I’ve made an album that doesn’t have any covers on it. I wanted it to feel like the rollercoaster ride that is life, so I put a lot of thought into sequencing the songs. It was important for me to start with light, and then go through darker times, and stubbornness and strength and weakness, and then end up on a hopeful note.”

Undercurrent is a sublimely resonant song cycle anchored around a haunting quartet of songs written and performed solo by the artist: “Early Morning Light,” “Everything To Hide,” “Take Another Turn” and “Jacqueline.” The album features several numbers co-written by Jarosz with a variety of collaborators who also contributed to the recordings, including Luke Reynolds (“Green Lights”), Jedd Hughes (“House Of Mercy”), Parker Millsap (“Comin’ Undone”) and Aoife O’Donovan (“Still Life”). The latter track features O’Donovan, of Crooked Still fame, as well as Nickel Creek co-founder Sara Watkins, Jarosz’s bandmates in their extracurricular trio I’m with Her. Undercurrent also includes two songs co-written with the Milk Carton Kids’ Joey Ryan, including the nostalgic “Back Of My Mind”.

“When I visualize this record, I think of the Central Park reservoir, where I spent a lot of time getting inspiration and thinking about the album,” Jarosz notes, adding, “It was the most focused I had ever been, in terms of trying to write every day and having a grander idea of what I really wanted to write, so I was able to enjoy the process of writing more than ever.

And it was a luxury to go to Nashville for two months to work on the record, because in the past I was always running back and forth between school, touring and the studio.”

While Undercurrent is a creative landmark for Jarosz, she’s been making music for most of her life. Growing up in Wimberley, Texas, she began singing in early childhood. Receiving a mandolin for Christmas when she was nine years old, she worked tirelessly to master the instrument, and learned to play guitar and clawhammer banjo along the way. When she was 11, she performed at her first bluegrass festival; over the next few years, she gained an impressive reputation as a young phenom on the festival circuit, absorbing a world of traditional influences while honing her own highly original songwriting sensibility.

“From an early age, I’ve had a strong desire to create music,” Jarosz states. “I was also fortunate to be surrounded by older, accomplished musicians who were my mentors. From the very beginning, all of my heroes looked out for me and challenged me in the best ways. It was great being raised in music that way. I always felt completely supported, and I think that that attitude affected the way I approach music now.”

In the summer of 2007, after performing at Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Sarah met Sugar Hill Records A&R rep Gary Paczosa, who was impressed enough to invite her to Nashville to record some of her compositions. The following year, the 16-year-old artist signed with Sugar Hill and began work on her 2009 debut album Song Up In Her Head. Sarah’s second album, Follow Me Down, arrived in 2011, and expanded the artist’s sound as well as her fan base, while her tireless touring efforts won her new fans from across the musical spectrum.

2013 saw the release of Jarosz’s third album, Build Me Up from Bones, which once again featured an expanded sonic and compositional palette. It also won Jarosz some of the most enthusiastic notices of her career, as well as Grammy nominations for Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Song. Jarosz toured to support Build Me Up From Bones for a good part of 2014, criss-crossing the US and making two trips to England, Scotland and Ireland. One of the highlights was her first appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival.

Jarosz spent much of 2015 touring widely as one-third of I’m With Her, the mini-supergroup she shares with kindred spirits Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan. “After singing my own songs for so many years, it was eye-opening to shift gears and be a part of something different,” Jarosz observes. “We’ve only been a band for a year, but I’ve learned so much from it already, and I definitely brought some of those lessons to Undercurrent.

“I’m just trying to become more focused and more honest, and trying to be a better listener and observer of the world around me,” she asserts. “That’s what I tried to do on Undercurrent, and I’m really pleased with how true this record feels to me. In some ways, it feels like my first record, in the sense that it was the first time I could focus all of my energy on it. Everything felt like it was leading to this moment.”