[Cover photo credit to Samuel Cooke]

North Carolina husband-and-wife duo Sarah and Austin McCombie, better known as Chatham Rabbits, have announced new album Be Real With Me, due out on February 14th, 2025. They have spent the two years since their last release having a bit of a “Return to Saturn,” reevaluating their lives and career through trial and error.

Sarah McCombie says:

I’m ready for our fans to get to know the people we are now. We’ve grown up together and getting to reveal this album feels like our collective coming of age.

The album’s title is “the plea to each other and their intermingled friends, family, and fanbase.”

Sarah explains:

We got married so young. We are simply not the same people we once were because playing music for a living has consumed and transformed us. This lifestyle has presented us with exhausting tour schedules, vulnerable songs that force us to talk about our marriage, difficult business decisions, and the ever-complicated dilemma of mixing art and money and friends and employees.

Written post-pandemic by Sarah and Austin and recorded over a two year period at the Studio at Small Pond Farm, in Pittsboro, North Carolina, Be Real With Me was co-produced by Austin McCombie and the band’s longtime collaborator, Saman Khoujinian (The Dead Tongues, Lou Hazel).

On this album, fans will still hear Sarah’s banjo, but also things like a drum machine, synthesizer, and pedal steel. They’ve recently released the single “Matador”, out now.

Chatham Rabbits are on the road again, with an album release tour set for early next year. A full list of dates can be found below or at chathamrabbits.com/tour.