Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz have announced their second record, Circle and Square, which features friends Mark Fain (bass), Lynn Williams (drums), and pianist Finn Goodwin-Bain. Circle and Square will be released on Red Beet Records on January 16th, 2026.

Both Brace and Jutz have been songwriting for decades, and they’ve been doing it together for ten years now, first in a trio with their late musical brother Peter Cooper, and lately as a duo, since Peter’s death in late 2022.

The new album sports cover artwork from Mary Ann Werner (also Eric’s spouse). The record’s ten songs are about “creation” in an era of destruction and through songwriting Brace and Jutz look at the “act of creation itself, the very opposite of destruction.”

The duo take inspiration from all their travels and experiences in life, as well as well as observation of the world around them, such as the “prevalence of repeated shapes and Jungian archetypes” in “Circle and Square”, and their own grief at the loss of Peter Cooper in “Nothing Hurts”. On the whole, the album is a “manifesto for imagination over indifference, music over silence, beauty over despair, and creation over destruction.”