Geographer

Part social scientist, part troubadour, if Geographer is an expert at anything, it’s precisely chronicling life’s imperfections.Over a decade, Geographer frontman Mike Deni released three  full-length  albums that  levitated  through  the  unbearable  lightness  of  being. The Animal Shapes EP put Geographer on the map and launched his career. Since then, he has played Outside Lands, Firefly, and more and performed with such musical luminaries as  The  Flaming  Lips,  Young  The  Giant,  Tycho,  Ratatat,  Betty  Who,  and  Tokyo  Police Club. His latestLP, Down and Out in the Garden of Earthly Delights (out November 12, 2021),  however,  brings  Geographer  back  down  to  terra  firma, confronting  the  all-too-human realities around us. The gravitation back to Earth started when he moved from SF to LA in Summer 2018. “I hit a ceiling in San Francisco. Everything feels possible here.That’s the vibe of LA: You’ve made  it  to  paradise. You  should be really happy…and then nobody is. There’s a lot of darkness —you have to sift through everything to find your own path.” says Deni. While recording  his  album,  engineer  Jules  de  Gasperis  showed  him  an  image  of  the  famed, 15th-century  triptych  painting  “The  Garden  of  Earthly  Delights,”  depicting  alternate realities of paradise, hell, and reality. “It’s like, why are we all so bummed out? We are all miserable. And we’re in paradise.” And thus, Down  and  Out  in  the  Garden  of  Earthly Delights—recorded between Spring and Winter of 2019 —was born.