8.23 Saturday (Jam / Rock) Nectar & The PBJ Present: "an evening with" CIRCLES AROUND THE SUN (2 sets) featuring Mikaela Davis 8pm doors 21+ Nectar Lounge 412 N 36th St www.nectarlounge.com The evening’s format: Set one: Circles Around The Sun Set two: Circles Around The Sun with Mikaela Davis Circles Around The Sun’s fourth studio album traverses towards galaxies unknown – Language is the sound of a rock band rebounding from unthinkable adversity, moving as one to confidently author their next chapter. Synth-drenched excursions into outer-spatial sound design, the six-song release welcomes guitarist John Lee Shannon to the fold, a longtime peer and tourmate who joins bassist Dan Horne, keyboardist Adam MacDougall, and drummer Mark Levy. The forthcoming release builds on the cosmic-disco vibe of 2020’s eponymous LP. The Floydian tongues on Language represent a new dawn, as evidenced by an ethereal title-track featuring harpist Mikaela Davis. The new material finds them oscillating through hybrid strains of disco-funk, soul jazz, and psychedelic rock, harnessing their stylistic lanes into a singular, intoxicating brew. Five years since her debut album Delivery, Mikaela Davis has moved away from her hometown of Rochester, shared the stage with the likes of Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Christian McBride, Bon Iver, Lake Street Dive and Circles Around the Sun and entered a new decade. But it’s the ever-evolving relationships between her closest friends and bandmates that has propelled the Hudson Valley-based artist onto her new album And Southern Star—a truly collaborative effort that ruminates on the choices we make, and the people we always come back to. Davis earned her degree in harp performance at the Crane School of Music, and has molded her classical music training to create an original and genre-bending catalog that weaves together 60s pop-soaked melodies, psychedelia and driving folk rock. She met her bandmates at pivotal moments in her life—drummer Alex Coté in childhood, guitarist Cian McCarthy and bassist Shane McCarthy in college, and steel guitarist Kurt Johnson in her early twenties. It’s the band’s collective step into adulthood that has informed much of And Southern Star’s thematic landscape.