New Music Release - Brandon De La Cruz releases 'The Wildcat I Can’t Calm Keeps Me From Home' - 5th September 2025
CREDIT: RUTH FRIEDLANDER
Artist Name - Brandon De La Cruz
Release Name - The Wildcat I Can’t Calm Keeps Me From Home
Release Date - 5th September 2025
Genre - Folk, Indie Folk, Alt Folk
Label - Brandon De La Cruz
'The Wildcat I Can’t Calm Keeps Me From Home' is the third single from Kirikiriroa-based folk musician Brandon De La Cruz’s forthcoming new album, Blue Irises in Hologram, which will be released on October 17th 2025.
Recording for 'The Wildcat I Can’t Calm Keeps Me From Home' took place at a borrowed house overlooking the Waikato River in Kirikiriroa from May-June 2024. Contributors to the track's instrumentation and arrangement include Jim Fulton (Sylvia’s Toaster), Nick Walsh (Big Sigh) and Rachel Hope Peary (Big Sigh).
Describing the genesis of the song, De La Cruz says, "Three years ago I participated in a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat up in Makarau. On day five, I was half-sleeping and dreamt of a tense and traumatised cat that dug its claws into my hand when I tried to help it. The scared cat became an analogy for the frightened energy of my own soul and has given me a context to better understand myself in the years since that first vision."
'The Wildcat I Can’t Calm Keeps Me From Home' was mixed by De Stevens and Brandon De La Cruz in Aotearoa and mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk in Portland, Oregon.
Its release follows that of the double single 'New Signs' / 'How Many Names For Yellow?' on 8th August.
Brandon De La Cruz is a folk artist whose lyricism is uniquely shaped by his interest in mythology, ceremony and RH Blyth’s translations of Japanese haiku. He grew up in the suburbs of Southern California's Inland Empire and has lived and performed regularly in Portland, OR, Berkeley, CA and Aotearoa. De La Cruz’s work has been featured on RNZ’s Bookmarks, as well as Flying Out’s Live Sessions. He has supported such renowned performers as Simon Joyner and Tom Brosseau. Prior records were inspired by the works of Rilke, Joan Didion and Ovid, while his most recent LP, Two Kilos of Blue, drew from local and personal images, and was showcased through performances at Camp A Low Hum, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki and Futuna Chapel in Wellington.
In 2025, De La Cruz was offered a fellowship by the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he’ll spend the next two years preparing his first manuscript of poetry for publication.
PRE-ORDER ‘BLUE IRISES IN HOLOGRAM‘
Tracklist:
War Machine
New Signs
The Wildcat I Can't Calm Keeps Me From My Home
Memory, No Friend To Me
What A Friend We Have In Jesus
Every Little Boy In Auckland
How Many Names For Yellow?
Blue Irises
