Mark Scott, the singer and songwriter who records as villagerrr, moved to Columbus, OH in late 2020, after graduating college that previous May during a global pandemic. It's not so much an inauspicious beginning as a reminder of the strangeness of that time.
Like Leaves is his first album recorded entirely in his new home, over the course of 2021 and 2022. He was trying to experiment with heavier sounds, embrace the lo-fi nature of the recordings, and explore the dynamic range of his songs.
Or at least that's how he remembers it.
The songs were almost entirely recorded in his tiny bedroom with terrible lighting and one window. It had this ugly carpet and the floor was uneven. And the winters are so long in Ohio.
Mark had to put cardboard under the drum set so it wouldn’t fall over.
And you hear this intimacy in the songs on Like Leaves—they're warm and homespun, thoughtful and honest, isolated and searching. It feels like a statement of purpose for a project that is just getting started.
Recorded mostly in a small bedroom with one window on east Duncan street, Columbus, Ohio.
All songs by Mark Scott.
David Fuller made the album cover.
Cam Garshon sang on "Pretty" and "Driving".
Mark Scott took the photo of Lake Michigan—somewhere west of Kalamazoo.
