Kevin Bronson on October 8th, 2015

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When Yellow Red Sparks’ debut album arrived in early 2013, it figured to catapult the band to bigger things. Artists such as Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers had ushered folk into the mainstream, and Joshua Hanson’s songs were on par, or better, than any of them. Yet Hanson felt uncomfortable with the hustle of fronting a band, sensing it detracted from his mission as a songwriter and storyteller. So he has pared back Yellow Red Sparks to a duo, with stand-up bassist Sara Lynn Nishikawa (who also sings and plays piano) supporting. “I really just wanted to get back to making decisions without having to talk to 10 different people about it,” Hanson says. “You start second-guessing things that were second nature in the beginning and I hated feeling like I had to constantly doubt my gut instincts.”

Now he’s ready to debut what he calls the “less-is-more” Yellow Red Sparks. The new EP “New Fangs Old Pangs” will be out Oct. 16, boasting all the qualities that made the debut album special: uncommon beauty, palpable ache and the meticulous craft that won him grand prize in the International Songwriting Competition. On the new song “Seven Seas,” which features backup vocals from Lucy Schwartz, Hanson works himself into a lather, and the song into a gallop, as sailing the seven seas (euphemistically, we assume) appears a better alternative than staying with a certain difficult someone.

||| Stream: “Seven Seas” and “I Want My Knife Back”