In 2024, Old Pup—the project of ever-active Milwaukee multi-instrumentalist Will Hansen—would follow up its Incognito Lounge debut release and preempt 2025’s exceptional Spider Towns album with an unexpected sonic turn. That sidestep was Lion, an effort Hansen told us was “born from a collage of experiments, meditations, and mistakes on tape.”
Originally released as a standalone EP, the four-track and 20-minute Lion was eventually taken down from streaming services and shelved to be re-released as one movement from an even more unorthodox and sprawling collection of ethereal material entitled Lion Spring Bird, which Hansen himself describes as “a collection of experimental folk soundscapes.” The album was released on cassette and digital platforms by a New York-based imprint called Island House Recordings on Friday, October 9.
Beyond the aforementioned Lion component (which was the product of a recording “accident” creating a lion-like tone that served as the basis for a larger concept), the 13-track release that spans approximately 50 minutes in total features—as the name suggests—an album-opening Bird movement with 30-some bird calls recorded on pedal steel morph and accompanied by banjo, upright bass, omnichord, and vocals. Rounding out the release is the Spring segment that’s rife with spring reverb tank-sourced sounds that Hansen likens to “daytime TV with the window open and a gray sky looming.”
Collectively, it shows a wholly different side of Will Hansen and shows that apparently an Old Pup can learn some new tricks. You can listen to Lion Spring Bird below and pick up one of 50 cassettes in existence on Bandcamp while you can.