Yours Are the Only Ears - Knock Hard
Susannah Cutler is a songwriter and producer born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan and Upstate New York. With a blues guitarist for a father and a country singer for a mother, she was introduced at birth to the profession of music. Cutler’s childhood memories include singing on stage with her mother, dancing with tall cowboys who ate fire at the gigs, and awaiting her father’s return from tour. Her first favorite album was a Muddy Waters cassette that her father would play for her in the car. Consequently, the first song she ever wrote was a blues number called, “To Get Me A Dog.” As a rebellious teenager refusing guitar lessons from her father, Cutler taught herself all of her favorite songs on guitar. In high school, she suffered from an onset of clinical depression and anxiety. Feeling isolated in her own mind, songwriting offered relief and became a necessary emotional outlet for the musical storytelling that seemed innate from her earliest days.
In 2014, she gave her private universe a public name and began playing shows in Brooklyn as Yours Are the Only Ears. Naming the project created space for Cutler’s collection of deeply personal and surreal poetry to flourish and take new shape. Around the same time, she decided to continue her visual art education at FIT. Her first semester back landed shortly after a traumatic breakup and social tumult that catalyzed a time of incubation, retreat and reflection. Forced to investigate ways in which she was and was not caring for herself, an emotional journey incurred. Although spread thin by school in a transformative time in her life, Cutler taught herself how to record out of a desire for autonomy and decided it was time to make her record. Now, on the cusp of graduation with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textile Design, “Knock Hard” is a triumphant testament to self love and perseverance when it feels as though the world has turned upside down.
Team Love is proud to release Yours Are the Only Ears debut album, Knock Hard, in May 2018. The album's cover art, vinyl, cassette, and lyric sheets are also illustrated and designed by Susannah Cutler.
CREDITS: All songs written and recorded by Susannah Cutler in her makeshift studios in update & Brooklyn, New York. Mixed by Mike Ditrio in Olympia, WA. Mastered by Rich Gaglia in Queens, NY. Susannah Cutler sings, plays acoustic & electric guitar, bass & keys. Dave Benton plays drums, singing saw & sings & plays electric guitar on "Fire In My Eyes." Jong Min Lin plays keys on all songs except for "To Be Alone" & "Seeds." Dan Goldberg sings & plays keys on "You & Bobby." David Cutler plays bass on "Saturn." Stew Cutler plays lapsteel & mandolin on "Seeds" & electric guitar on "Hole Again." "You & Bobby" is dedicated to Amy. Thanks & endless love for family and friends who encouraged me.
Released May 11, 2018
Buy the vinyl or cassette here, find the digital at Bandcamp.
