Name: Sorry I Haven’t Called
Brand: Vagabon

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

0075597911633

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

140 Gram Vinyl.

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2023-09-15

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Warner Music Group

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

Total Cap

Black LP

0075597911671

Softpack

Artist

Vagabon

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Nonesuch

Nonesuch is a US record label that was created in 1964 as a budget label for classical releases. It eventually expanded to include adventurous music from around the globe and world-premiere recordings of contemporary composers. Nonesuch has gone through various ownership changes over the years, including being acquired by Warner Communications in 1970 and becoming a sub-label of Warner Bros. Records in 2004.

Under the leadership of Jac Holzman, Nonesuch was established as a budget label for classical releases licensed from large record companies in Britain and France. Designed by Bill Harvey, the packaging emphasized affordability with releases marketed as "Recordings at the Price of a Quality Paperback."

In 1970, Nonesuch became part of Warner Communications (Kinney/WEA) and continued to release music under its own name along with other Elektra-based labels like Elektra and Asylum Records. The merger between Elektra and Atlantic labels in 2004 resulted in Nonesuch becoming a sub-label of Warner Bros. Records within the Warner Music Group.

Tamko is a multi-instrumentalist and producer from New York. She has been recording music since 2014 under the name Vagabon. With her unique blend of indie rock and electronic sounds, Vagabon's music captivates listeners with its emotive lyrics and catchy melodies. Her talent as a songwriter shines through in every song she creates, drawing inspiration from personal experiences and introspection. Whether performing live or in the studio, Vagabon's passion for music is evident in every note she plays.

Nonesuch releases Sorry I Haven’t Called, the new album by Vagabon, the moniker of Lætitia Tamko. Co-produced by Tamko and Rostam (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Clairo), it finds Tamko reinventing herself once again and features the most playful and adventurous music of her career, as evidenced by its lead track and opening song ‘"Can I Talk My Shit?".&nbsp;

“I didn’t feel like being introspective,” says Tamko of her new album.  “I just wanted to have fun.”  Following her intimate 2017 debut Infinite Worlds, the New York artist favoured expansive and evocative electronic textures in her breakthrough 2019 self-titled follow-up.  But her latest album feels like a wholly new era for Tamko, one that’s transformational and uncompromising.  Across 12 vibrant tracks she wrote and produced primarily in Germany, she channels dance music and effervescent pop through her own confident sensibilities.  These conversational songs are alive and unselfconscious, a document of an artist fully embracing her vision and reclaiming her joy. 

The first words she sings on the album are, “Can I talk my shit? / I got way too high for this.”  It’s a statement of purpose for the rest of the album that this is an unapologetic artist.  “This whole record is how I talk to my friends and how to talk to my lovers,” says Tamko. “I think honesty and conversational songwriting can become poetry. There’s beauty in plainly speaking without metaphors and without flowery imagery.”

The story of Sorry I Haven’t Called started in grief after Tamko’s best friend died in 2021. This devastating and unexpected loss unmoored Tamko but also gave her a newfound clarity. “The things that I thought I cared about, I no longer cared about,” she says. “I had a realisation that I need to make sure to feel everything that comes my way.” She decided to sell her things and move to a small lakeside village a few hours north of Hamburg in northern Germany to process everything. “There's no linear path to grief, and everyone handles it differently, but uprooting my life just felt like exactly what I had to do,” says Tamko. “I needed a place to think and go through my discomfort privately but to also explore the newness and urgency I was feeling in my life.” In the village, her phone didn’t work and there were no close grocery stores or restaurants, so she spent her time alone working on music.

Despite the palpable absence in her life, her new songs were her most disarming and ebullient yet.  The first one she wrote was ‘Carpenter’, a mesmerizing track anchored by a tangible bass groove, where she sings, “I wasn’t ready to move on out / but I'm more ready now.”  It’s a fully-realised track and feels like the culmination of her catalogue so far.  “A lot of the music that I was making there had nothing to do with my grief at all,” says Tamko.  “Once I gave myself permission to make a record that's full of life and energy, I realized that’s the point of this album.  In the midst of going through all of these tough things, it became a record because of the vitality that these songs had.”  For Tamko, there’s power in pursuing happiness. 

While writing in Germany, Tamko nurtured her love for dance music and let it seep into her new songs.  “The only things that were giving me access to a feeling were dance music and going to a rave in an extremely dark club where if I wanted to cry, I could do it and be around other people,” she says. 

After a few months in Germany that included marathon writing sessions and a whirlwind romance, Tamko decided to stay with friends in Los Angeles and finish her record.  She enlisted co-producer Rostam to help her unify her vision. 

Sorry I Haven’t Called is a warm and resilient album about embracing the ecstatic moments wherever you can by knowing how you love and how you mourn. It’s an album born of both communal dancefloor revelations and the clarifying peace from solitude, an emotional rebirth as well as an artistic one. “This record feels like what I've been working towards,” says Tamko. “When I think of this album, I think of playfulness. It's completely euphoric. It's because things were dark that this record is so full of life and energy. It’s a reaction to what I was experiencing at the time, not a document of it.”