Stream: Runnner, ‘Awash’

Kevin Bronson on May 13th, 2021

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Noah Weinman makes cinematic folk songs under the name Runnner — or maybe we should say incubates them, as they emerge glowing, warm and soft to the touch.

After some DIY releases, including last year’s “One of One” EP, Runner has signed to Run for Cover Records (also the new home of L.A.’s Mini Trees), which will release the album “Always Repeating” on July 16.

The single “Awash” actually dates to Runnner’s 2017 debut; it’s one of several re-recorded songs that will appear on the album. “I wrote this song in about 15 minutes, though I had been kicking the title around for a bit,” Runnner says. “It felt like the word I was looking for, but I couldn’t get past it. I was feeling so lost and distant from everything, but I would choke on the language anytime I tried to elaborate. I eventually was able to let the song come simply and not stress the specificity too much.”

With choral harmonies, banjo, trumpet, slide guitar and a lyrical economy that nonetheless conveys a man out of place, it’s exemplary of the project’s meticulously orchestrated melancholia.

||| Stream: “Awash”