To the Races

Saddle Creek Exclusive LP + 7" Bundle
- Orange and teal color-in-color vinyl pressed at GZ
- Includes To the Races(Vocal Version) b/w Sister Holly black 7” 
- Limited Edition of 250 (Limit 2 per customer)

Color LP
- Opaque orange vinyl pressed at GZ (Limit 2 per customer)

Originally released in 2006, Eric Bachmann’s debut solo album To the Races returns to vinyl nearly eighteen years after its original pressing.

Returning home from tour to no commonly-defined home, Eric Bachmann largely wrote To the Races in June and July of 2005 while voluntarily living in the back of his van. Bachmann made the best of the hospitable Northwestern summer by setting up home and shop in his vehicle, and found that living like a makeshift Siddhartha worked well for him: he used the time to craft the unadorned and unapologetically forthright collection of songs that compose his first solo release.

Whereas Bachmann's prior release, Crooked Fingers' Dignity and Shame, had been his most poppy and immediately accessible album to date, To the Races is undoubtedly his most sparse and reflective. Having stepped out from under the cover of a band name, To the Races marked Bachmann's proper eponymous debut, and the music echoes the change to a more direct, spartan approach. Self-recorded in a hotel in the Outer Banks town of Buxton, NC, these songs reveal an expert songwriter further honing his craft after more than a dozen releases.

Bachmann's warm vocals and deceptively simple arrangements keep the song's quiet elegance ardent and complete, only occasionally augmented by Miranda Brown's angelic harmonies or Tom Hagerman's (Devotchka) haunting violin. From the gently urgent opening notes of "Man O' War" to the quiet guitar strum and soothing piano line of "Little Bird," To the Races tells familiar but rarely as well articulated stories of self-imposed or unintentional isolation and the common search for--or escape from--some kind of sanctuary.

Release Date: August 9th, 2024
Original Release Date: August 22nd, 2006

TRACK LIST
1. Man O' War 
2. Home 
3. Carrboro Woman 
4. Genivieve 
5. Genie, Genie 
6. Lonesome Warrior 
7. To the Races
8. Liars and Thieves 
9. Little Bird 
10. So Long, Savannah
11. To the Races (Vocal Version) [Bonus Track]*
12. Sister Holly [Bonus Track]*

*exclusive to 7" and digital