Dope Girl Chronicles (New LP)

On Friday, December 1st, 2024 a years-long prophecy was fulfilled. Kevin Patrick Sullivan-known to many as Field Medic-will release his highly anticipated new album, a record first announced seven years ago when, at a gig, he prefaced “”Do A Little Dope”” with a single promise: The song will have it’s official studio release in 2023, on a forthcoming collection entitled dope girl chronicles. The album is a labor of immense love from Sullivan-both in service to the lore of Field Medic and to the listeners who’ve been supporting him for a decade. The songs were written around the same time dope girl chronicles was first teased on-stage, but this chapter is not a spur-of-the-moment construction of brand-new tracks meant to bring a fable to life. No, these songs are of a special moment in Sullivan’s creativity. Written through the headspace he was in in 2015 and 2016, tracks like “”dope girl,”” “”cemetery,”” and “”cement”” are as affixed to the legacy and legend of dope girl chronicles as Sullivan is himself. The songs all share a common thread of relationships, not crafting an orbit around sobriety and mental health like Sullivan’s recent releases have gravitated towards. And the record is largely an abandonment of the tonal structure of September’s light is gone 2, as Field Medic is reasserted as a folk project through hints of country, sun-soaked, quick-picked chaos, and sublime balladry. But this isn’t some assembly of vaulted tracks being cobbled together for the sake of meeting a deadline. It’s high-brow mixtape core, an archival of a bygone era marked up with contemporary talent. These are some of the very best songs Sullivan has ever recorded-especially the cute, turn-key lead single “”silver girl,”” one of his most stirring and beautiful ballads. dope girl chronicles is, at it’s core, the type of Field Medic record that is the epitome of all that Sullivan has built in the last decade. It’s rid of digital dependency and beckons back to his San Francisco days, when he was gigging around the city at any place that needed a bill-filler. Here, the arc of the lore is a throughline fully realized. The spiritual contract has been fulfilled. Field Medic is free.