Mandolin Orange
Tides Of A Teardrop - 2019
Spotify Singles - 2018
Blindfaller - 2016
Such Jubilee - 2015
Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger - 2011
This Side of Jordan - 2013
Quiet Little Room - 2010
“Mandolin Orange is a slow-burning, steadily rising folk duo from North Carolina. Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz sing warm, wise songs about getting by in the world — and, over the course of five albums, they've mastered a largely acoustic sound that exudes gentle elegance.”
- NPR
‘It’s time we made time just for talking, it’s time we made time to heal,’ Andrew Marlin sings in this lushly-decorated folk ballad, backed by Emily Frantz’s harmonies and the gentle atmospherics of the pair’s backing band. Inspired by the death of Marlin’s mother, ‘Time We Made Time’ makes a lovely case for confronting one’s emotional baggage head-on."
- Rolling Stone, “10 Best Country and Americana Songs of the Week”
“Now a decade into a career that has seen it help redefine American roots music for a younger generation, the duo Mandolin Orange has officially mastered blending engaging storytelling with acoustic elements of bluegrass, folk and country.”
- The Washington Post
“Blindfaller just further establishes…Mandolin Orange as one of the most talented acts making music today. Unrestrained and boundless brilliance. Blindfaller [is] a gold mine of lyrical honesty and musical simplicity."
- No Depression
"The musical tapestry of Blindfaller is delicately woven with lush threads of acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin and pedal steel, all ever-present without ever overplaying. However, it's the vocal interplay of Frantz and Marlin that is the band's most distinctive calling card. Opening track 'Hey Stranger' crystallizes all of Mandolin Orange's unique qualities into one three-and-a-half minute heart punch that both soothes and aches."
- Rolling Stone, "40 Best Country Albums of 2016"
“Together, Marlin and Frantz manage an effortlessly unaffected vocal merging that lies rooted in their bluegrass roots, yet carries traces of both country and contemporary folk...there’s an earnestness to the duo’s delivery and approach that imbues the music with a rustic honesty and simplicity that belies the complexity of the harmonies and instrumentation.”
- John Paul, Pop Matters
RECENT NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS
Mandolin Orange has made their Today Show debut with a stunning performance of The Wolves from their most recent album Tides of a Teardrop.
Check out their stirring performance.
The group is currently wrapping up their fall tour, which will close back home in NC in Hickory on December 6th. They will hit the road again in January to kick off the spring tour cycle, which will include a special performance with the Colorado Symphony in Denver on January 17th, and an appearance on Austin City Limits Live January 23rd.
In its first week, Tides Of A Teardrop, the band’s sixth studio album, charted at #1 on: Heatseekers (Top New Artist Albums), Americana/Folk Albums, Bluegrass Albums, Current Country Albums; and made their debut on the Billboard Top 200 charts - coming in at #164.
“Time We Made Time,” the first single from the album, premiered with NPR Music and was named one of the “10 Best Country and Americana Songs of the Week” by Rolling Stone. Other reputable outlets to rave about Tides Of A Teardrop include, but are not limited to: Garden & Gun, Pop Matters, Washington Post and WYNC.
Mandolin Orange’s fifth studio album, Blindfaller (Sept 2016) was named one of Rolling Stone's "40 Best Country Albums of 2016, debuted at #3 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart and was nominated for "Album of the Year" and "Country/Americana/Folk Album of the Year" by the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).
The band has received over 102 million track streams for their catalog along with placement on major Spotify, Apple and Amazon playlists; along with 42 + million streams for Blindfaller (2016).
Tour highlights include:
Sold out venues across the US and Europe for the Tides Of A Teardrop tour in room capacities of 1,000 - 2,500+. The band will headline major festivals in the summer of 2019- notably: Pickathon, High Sierra, Mountain Jam, and Tønder.
An appearance on NPR’s Live From Here in January 2019.
Performances at Red Rocks Amphitheater with the Avett Brothers and the Ryman Auditorium with Josh Ritter.
Past Festival appearances: Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Festival, Pickathon, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Edmonton Folk Festival, and Winnipeg Folk Festival among others.
TV placements on Lethal Weapon, Nashville, Secrets and Lies, and the Deadliest Catch.
ABOUT MANDOLIN ORANGE
Mandolin Orange’s music radiates a mysterious warmth —their songs feel like whispered secrets, one hand cupped to your ear. The North Carolina duo have built a steady and growing fanbase with this kind of intimacy, and on Tides of A Teardrop, due out February 1, it is more potent than ever. By all accounts, it is the duo’s fullest, richest, and most personal effort. You can hear the air between them—the taut space of shared understanding, as palpable as a magnetic field, that makes their music sound like two halves of an endlessly completing thought. Singer-songwriter Andrew Marlin and multi-instrumentalist Emily Frantz have honed this lamp glow intimacy for years.
On Tides of A Teardrop, Marlin wrote the songs, as he usually does, in a sort of stream of consciousness, allowing words and phrases to pour out of him as he hunted for the chords and melodies. Then, as he went back to sharpen what he found, he found something troubling and profound. Intimations of loss have always haunted the edges of their music, their lyrics hinting at impermanence and passing of time. But Tides of A Teardrop confronts a defining loss head-on: Marlin's mother, who died of complications from surgery when he was 18.
These songs, as well as their sentiments, remain simple and quiet, like all of their music. But beneath the hushed surface, they are staggeringly straightforward. “I’ve been holding on to the grief for a long time. In some ways I associated the grief and the loss with remembering my mom. I feel like I’ve mourned long enough. I’m ready to bring forth some happier memories now, to just remember her as a living being."
For this album, Marlin and Frantz enlisted their touring band, who they also worked with on their last album Blindfaller. Having recorded all previous albums live in the studio, they approached the recording process in a different way this time. “We went and did what most people do, which we’ve never done before—we just holed up somewhere and worked the tunes out together,” Frantz says. There is a telepathy and warmth in the interplay on Tides of A Teardrop that brings a new dynamic to the foreground—that holy silence between notes, the air that charges the album with such profound intimacy. “This record is a little more cosmic, almost in a spiritual way—the space between the notes was there to suggest all those empty spaces the record touches on,” acknowledges Marlin. There are many powerful ways of acknowledging loss; sometimes the most powerful one is saying nothing at all.