In the summer of 2021, the musician and filmmaker Daniel Carlson reached out to me after hearing a song of mine on Pseu Braun’s incomparable “Thing with a Hook” show on WFMU. Dan, whose music I’ve loved for a very long time, asked if I wanted to contribute to This Week’s Special Guest Stars, his YouTube series which includes both his own covers of songs and those he's created with people like Rick Moody and Matt Johnson.

I was just starting work on Closer Than They Appear, and I proposed we work together on “Sand River,” a sublime track from the Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man album Out of Season (2002). Needless to say, it’s a tall order to take on anything sung by Gibbons, who has one of the most stunningly expressive voices in music, but Dan came up with an instrumental approach that made tackling it not only possible, but incredibly fun to do.