Case Oats

Merge Records announces the signing of Case Oats, the Chicago outfit led by Casey Gomez Walker. The band— Gomez Walker (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Jason Ashworth (bass)—is putting the finishing touches on their debut album due later this year and, today, share a first taste with the new single/video, “Seventeen.”

Emerging from Chicago’s vaunted music community, Case Oats began seven years ago when Gomez Walker, a writer and poet with some experience in bands, met Tweedy, a seasoned drummer who has performed with Jeff Tweedy, Waxahatchee, Mavis Staples, and Norah Jones. Soon after, they started writing songs together, and in the time since, Case Oats have honed in on a lived-in sound that perfectly complements Gomez Walker’s wry, confessional and full-bodied lyrics. “Seventeen” is a perfect “hello” from the band, brooding and playful and pitched to the left of their country-rock cradle, a poem expressed like a 1 a.m. torch song on a long-lost iPod that strikes a riveting balance between Iris DeMent and Kimya Dawson.

Reflecting on the track, Gomez Walker says, “When you’re seventeen years old, everything feels like the most important thing in the world, yourself included. And growing up in a small town [Eureka, Missouri], it’s even harder to see over the horizon. Every emotion feels big. This is a song about making it past that feeling.” The song’s accompanying video was directed by Robert Salazar.