Twilark Photo credit: Ladye Jane Vickers
The Taming Ties Create, the debut album from North Carolina’s Twilark, unfolds like a rediscovered memory: precise, disorienting, and wide open. Imbued with a quiet force, these are songs for early mornings or late nights, when reflection becomes reckoning. The record isn’t out until September 12th, but The Big Takeover is excited to share an exclusive premiere of the single “Beacon”, which comes out August 15th.
The indie songwriting project of North Carolina–based artist Canon Pence, Twilark emerges from the crossroads of southern melancholy, gothic folk, and chiming, introspective indie rock. Imagine a Ben Gibbard with more Magnolia and less Douglas Fir and you’ll start to get the idea. It’s lovely, enchanting stuff.
Pence is a self-taught musician whose relationship with the art form has long been private. What began as a quiet personal exercise turned into something more urgent, more focused—a way of unburdening. Twilark took shape gradually, without a clear starting point or defined plan. The songs were written over several years, most of them at home, often late at night.
Regarding “Beacon,” Pence tells us:
[It’s] “one of the oldest songs on the album, thankfully unearthed in the process of selecting material. It stands apart both for its relatively sunny disposition and an arrangement that borrows some inspiration from the kind of old-school country still played at Nashville’s own Robert’s Western World. Perhaps counter-intuitively, but staying true to Twilark’s roots, the song’s outro contains a lyrical reference to Chelsea Wolfe’s dark masterpiece ‘Hypnos.’”
The Taming Ties Create was recorded at The Bomb Shelter in Nashville with Zach Little (Saintseneca) and Dominic Billett (Julia Jacklin, Steve Gunn), with pedal steel contributions from Spencer Cullum. Songs that began as sparse acoustic sketches took shape through a collaborative process that favored responsiveness over rigidity; layering tones, textures, and arrangements in service of the music’s emotional arc.
The Taming Ties Create is a genre-blurring collection, melodic and moody, literate and immersive. Pence’s voice is slender and clear, drifting through rich arrangements that never overwhelm the core intimacy of the songwriting. There’s a quiet confidence in his delivery, grounded in the lived experience of someone who has endured, unraveled, and reassembled.
Pence’s mastery lies in his ability to craft music that is otherworldly and enchanting yet is also a celebration of the raw emotions that make us human. The Taming Ties Create is a debut that feels lived-in and deeply considered. It’s a perfect soundtrack for quiet revelations and late-night conversations.
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