Cardinal

Evan explained the Cardinal album art in a reddit AMA in March 2016.

Cardinal is a lot about correspondence and travel — the image is a very abstracted geometrical bird; it’s also a letter leaving my mailbox and traveling to the west coast.

In an interview in Allston Pudding, Evan described the writing process and some themes of the album.

Much of Cardinal was written when we went on our first full US tour three summers ago with Tawny Peaks. There was a lot of traveling, a lot of friends I had met and wanted to keep in touch with but were across the country, so a lot of it is about correspondence, placement, and displacement. Those were themes that I really feel emphasized a sense of home on the album because it’s tough to really know something unless you know its inverse.

Regarding recording Cardinal, Evan said, “We recorded drums at purchase & most of the rest of it in my bedroom or basement or at the Levines' house.”