Field Medic, the moniker of Los Angeles-based folk artist Kevin Patrick, has announced his new album ‘fade into the dawn’ will be released on April 19 via Run For Cover Records. He has just released the album’s first single ‘henna tattoo,’ a driving acoustic track recorded straight to a 4-track tape recorder backed by his boom box drum machine. The album is now available for pre-order and includes an instant download of ‘henna tattoo.’

It’s a song about being afraid to speak up for fear of what the truth might be,”explains Patrick. “So instead you remain in a state of unease & anxiety, because at least perpetual uncertainty isn’t as bad as the imagined worst case scenario”.

‘fade into the dawn’ is Patrick’s first proper full-length release for Run For Cover following his critically acclaimed collection ‘songs from the sunroom’, which received acclaim from BrooklynVegan, Noisey, Stereogum and more. The new album features ten sparse, acoustic tracks that reckon with our perceptions of success and self as they face down the inevitable complications that arise from realizing any hard-won dream.

During the recording of ‘fade into the dawn’, Patrick found himself going through a number of tumultuous changes: he relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco, where he’d lived and recorded on and off for several years; he left the world of day jobs behind in order to tour year-round; and he decided to quit drinking, only to return to it halfway through a particularly grueling run of shows. It was the sort of emotional roller-coaster that he would normally work through in song, but even the simple act of writing seemed profoundly more complicated than ever before. Patrick had always written candidly about doubt and darkness and anxiety, but ‘fade into the dawn’ required him to dig deeper than ever before here, blending black humor and bold introspection as he weighs fantasy against reality and searches for meaning in the mundane.

Patrick writes of this process, “I had to learn to let go again, because the best songs are the ones that happen inexplicably, that feel like they come out of me almost against my will.”

Field Medic’s radical honesty is audible on every track of ‘fade into the dawn’. The minimalist acoustic arrangements and lo-fi production aesthetic, along Patrick’s cutting lyrical wit, all combine to produce an album that reflects his natural confidence as a songwriter, even as he gives himself permission to question this self-conception with each ensuing verse.