About Mishka's new record:

When We Were Animals is the new full-length album from singer, songwriter, bestselling Kindle Singles author and storyteller Mishka Shubaly, due May 2 on vinyl, CD and digital.

Animals was recorded in a state of quasi-homelessness between motel rooms, couches, an unheated trailer and housesitting for friends during one of the most run-and-gun times in Shubaly’s adult life. Astonishingly, this didn’t result in a sketchy, edgy mess, but a lavish production, his first just-might-be-a-classic record.

Lyrically, Animals is about the aftermath: the end of love, the hangover, the comedown, life after addiction. Despite, or perhaps because of the dark material, the record still crackles with black humor, a brutal sort of tenderness, and defiant fire. A scene we return to again and again is two lonely desperate people doing lonely, desperate things together… and bringing out the absolute worst in each other. Shubaly’s preferred love is one that leaves scars, many of them self-inflicted.

On this record, Shubaly zeroes in on his connections with the opposite sex in an uncomfortable moral growth spurt. “I’ll identify as a recovering misogynist working hard to support feminism,” Shubaly says. “This record shows some personal shortcomings in high relief. That’s by design— it’s time for us to call ourselves out.” For that alone, in our 2018 landscape where soap-boxers are more apt to point fingers online than to examine, expose and excise their own harmful impulses, Animals is an achievement.

Special guests on When We Were Animals include Cait O’Riordan (The Pogues), Adrian Grenier (Entourage), Bill Whitten (Grand Mal) and Star Anna. More than on any other record, Shubaly delivers the pitch-black humor that gained him a devoted international following laced into an intoxicating new sound, cast and crew. It’s his funniest, grimiest, most acidic collection of story-songs to date.

• Singer - songwriter