Categories:
Cart 0

Your cart is empty

Noah Gundersen

With a poignant, ruminative slant to his indie folk songs, Noah Gundersen has experimented with his sound over the years while remaining distinctly personal in his approach. He released his first EP, Brand New World, as a teenager in 2008. The yearning acoustic folk of his first few releases, including debut album Ledges (2014), gradually made way for electric guitar and synths, culminating in the arena-sized flourishes of 2017's White Noise. Releases like 2019's Lover and 2021's A Pillar of Salt embraced a more intimate demeanor, as did the sturdy electro-folk anthems of 2023's If This Is the End. Born in Olympia, Washington, in 1989, Gundersen grew up in nearby Centralia with an extremely religious but also very musical family that frowned on secular music, a view that he eventually abandoned. He began taking piano lessons before he was a teen, and after inheriting an electric Epiphone guitar from his father in 2002, he started tracking songs on his father's recording equipment. By the time he was 16, Gundersen was gigging in local cafés, and in 2006 his sister Abby, an able violinist, cellist, pianist, and harmony singer, started accompanying him. The duo added a rhythm section and began performing as a full band under the name the Courage. Gundersen also formed the post-hardcore group Beneath Oceans in 2007, but after finishing an unreleased EP, the band called it quits in 2008 and Gundersen resumed his solo career. His first solo EP, 2008's Brand New World, was recorded in Eugene, Oregon in a home studio and featured plenty of his sister's playing and singing. A live album with the Courage, Live at the Triple Door, appeared the same year. Two more solo EPs followed, Saints & Liars in 2009 and Family in 2011. Arriving on Dualtone Music early in 2014, Gundersen's full-length solo debut was an acoustic album titled Ledges. He released the tour-exclusive EP Twenty-Something later that year, and an edgier but still intimate sophomore LP, Carry the Ghost, came out in mid-2015. Fleshing out his sound with occasional synths and prominent effects, 2017's White Noise marked Gundersen's debut for Cooking Vinyl. The digital-only collection White Noise B-Sides followed in early 2019 before the release of the more personal Lover, in August of that year. Gundersen later issued an all-acoustic album, A Raven and a Dove, featuring stripped-down versions of songs from Lover. After leaving Seattle, his home for more than a decade, he found a balance between electronic and acoustic textures on his next studio LP, 2021's A Pillar of Salt, which featured a duet with his friend Phoebe Bridgers. He continued to mix earnest folk and electronic elements like programmed drums and atmospheric keys on the album If This Is the End. Produced by Gundersen and Andy Park, it arrived on the Nashville-based Soundly Music label in September 2023.
© Steve Leggett & Marcy Donelson /TiVo
Listen

Similar artists

Haley Heynderickx
Gungor
Josh Ritter
The Head And The Heart
Beirut
Karli Fairbanks
Ari Herstand
Harrison Whitford
Lucy Dacus
Phoebe Bridgers
Fleet Foxes
Sharon Van Etten
Amy Stroup
Marc Scibilia
Leyla McCalla
Joshua James
Grizzly Bear
Sufjan Stevens
John Paul White
Liza Anne
William Fitzsimmons
First Aid Kit
City and Colour
Andy Park
Jon Foreman
José González
Iron & Wine

Discography

40 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

1 2
1 2

My favorites

This item has been successfully <span>added / removed</span> from your favorites.

Sort and filter releases