Langhorne Slim has come a long way since his last album three years ago. He left behind booze, drugs, Brooklyn and a longtime relationship on his way to recording his latest record The Spirit Moves with his band The Law.
Langhorne Slim said his more raucous days got him into some trouble, but that trouble has brought him and The Law to where they are now.
“You need it all to get where you’re going, I suppose,” Langhorne Slim said. “At this point in my life, the idea was to remain wild but to refine the wildness. Not to tame or leash it, but to get more out of the stuff, more out of that soul and that spirit.”
The Spirit Moves retains some of Langhorne’s Slim’s wild side, but also turns a new chapter filled with sensitivity and honesty.
The song “Wolves” shines a light on this endearing sentiment of change and openness heard throughout the album. Langhorne Slim said the poems within James Kavanaugh’s “There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves” were essential to the song.
“There are poems in that book, at least from what I took from it, about sensitivity, vulnerability, being real, being raw and being honest,” he said. "There is great strength to be found in those things.”
Langhorne Slim said while making The Spirit Moves he was thinking about embracing his own vulnerability, and finding strength amidst life's more intimidating moments.
“I believed that if I could have breakthroughs within those sorts of concepts in real life, that I would be a better man,” he said. "It can hurt to be open but I believe it’s a better way to exist in this place."
Langhorne Slim & The Law play at 9:00 p.m. at Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill on Friday, September 18.
Listen to "Wolves" below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T3GkMAlDTk