A new benefit compilation for charities supporting immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers has corralled new songs from Dirty Projectors, Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin, Tim Heidecker, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, William Tyler, Lambchop, Lonnie Holley, and many others. Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers arrives December 5 via Western Vinyl. New songs from Alan Sparhawk and Benjamin Booker lead the record—listen to their contributions, “No More Darkness” and “A Place for Us,” below.
The compilation beneficiaries are two Texas-based organizations: American Gateways and Casa Marianella. Each provides free or low-cost legal services, food, shelter, access to health care, and other essential services to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. As well as contributing a track, Tim Heidecker will host a “live variety show and raffle/auction” on his call-in show Office Hours on December 4 to support the cause.
The producers and organizers of Passages, Emilie Rex and Rick Alverson, prompted the contributors to write and record their songs in a place that feels like home. “Home, as we know it, is under threat,” they said in a press release. “When immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers exercise their human right to safe passage, they defend our ability to do so—and our right to be and feel at home.” Rex and Alverson invite us “to join a local organization defending our neighbors, to call our representatives, to have those hard talks with our family members.”
The album will come out on vinyl, as well as digitally, and a limited-edition version comes with liner notes by Jason De León and poetry from Ross Gay. Both editions feature photography by Greg Constantine and Reena Saini Kallat’s cover art, which you can see below. All labor costs involved in making the album were donated or separately fundraised, according to the press release. You can pre-order the LP via Bandcamp.
