Michael McDermott's Flowers From The Graveyard Cements His Place as One of America's Most Important Songwriters
New album arrives August 21, 2027 — 11 songs that may finally force the world to pay full attention
"Michael McDermott is one of the best songwriters in the world."
— Stephen King
"Despair never sounded so good."
— The Hollywood Reporter
"McDermott may prove to be one of his generation's greatest talents."
— The Washington Post
Some artists take decades to arrive. Chicago singer-songwriter Michael McDermott has been arriving — album after album, song after song — for thirty-plus years. With Flowers From The Graveyard, his new full-length on Pauper Sky Records arriving August 21, 2027, the arrival may finally be undeniable.
McDermott has long occupied a peculiar place in American music: extravagantly praised — by Stephen King, by the Washington Post, by Hollywood Reporter — and perpetually on the verge. Raised on the dual gospel of early Dylan and the Stones, Tom Waits and the Who, Woody Guthrie and Van Morrison, he has never made a record that fits neatly into a marketing category. That restless refusal to be contained is, of course, precisely what makes him essential.
Flowers From The Graveyard collects 11 self-penned songs that move fluidly between anthemic rock and bruised introspection, between political fury and hard-won philosophical calm. It is the work of a songwriter who has, as he puts it, stopped trying to control what was never his to control.
Key Tracks
"The Best We Get"
A rocker that splits the difference between Del Amitri's melodic precision and Tom Petty's driving American heartland authority. Big chords, bigger hooks — McDermott reminding anyone who needs reminding that he can write a song that owns a room.
"Nobody"
A loser anthem for the ages. Its chorus — "I'm just a nobody, nobody knows" — arrives not as a lament but as a celebration, a paradoxical freedom found in anonymity. McDermott has always known how to turn humility into something that sounds like liberation.
"Always A Ways Away"
Broad-shouldered and unhurried, this is McDermott at his most assured — a song that carries weight without straining under it. The kind of track that sounds like it has always existed.
"But For The Little Moments"
The album's most contemplative offering, referencing a quiet scene in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories as a call to set aside lofty aspirations for something more Stoic and present. McDermott has spoken plainly about what inspired it:
"I think what sent my life into a tailspin for so long was my frustration in trying to control that which wasn't in my power. It's in the silence and little moments now, where I find the most meaning."
"The Future"
McDermott has never shied from saying what he means, and here he says it at full volume. An anthem in the truest sense, built for collective voices, its chorus a blunt and unapologetic declaration of democratic principle. Not a song that asks permission.
"Here we don't bow to any King —
So let the motherfucking freedom ring.
Here we don't bow to any king
and certainly not a clown from Queens."
McDermott recorded and released his previous dual albums — the acoustic Lighthouse on the Shore and the electric East Jesus — simultaneously on his own Pauper Sky Records, a bold statement of creative independence that drew on a rich cast of collaborators including Heather Lynne Horton, Will Kimbrough, and John Deaderick. Where those companion records explored the twin poles of his musical personality, Flowers From The Graveyard synthesizes them — electric and acoustic, tender and fierce, personal and political — into a single urgent statement.
The Washington Post once wrote that McDermott "may prove to be one of his generation's greatest talents." The operative word in that sentence is may. With Flowers From The Graveyard, the conditional tense is no longer required. His time has come.
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Catch up with Michael McDermott by checking out his website, subscribing to his YouTube channel, and following him on Facebook and Instagram.
www.michael-mcdermott.com
www.facebook.com/MichaelMcDermottMusic