Austin, Texas-based band Black Books will be releasing their powerful sophomore LP Can't Even in Europe in Winter via Shifting Sounds / Cargo Records Germany. Can't Even thrives in dualities - debilitating sadness and exalting joy, bitter endings and expectant beginnings, lost love and new hope. Since their eponymous debut LP released in 2013 by UK-based Believe Recordings - and a subsequent tour opening for The Flaming Lips - the band has experienced monumental changes: births and deaths, marriages and divorces, losing and gaining members. The result of this tumultuous but transformative period is the stunning and potent sophomore effort, Can't Even. Can't Even is a poignant record brimming with dreamy melancholia, punctuated by moments of pure elation. The album can be defiant and bold, and at other times plaintive and searching. The resultant songs highlight a more mature band that continues to explore expansive soundscapes. Yet each of the 11 songs on Can't Even have diverse traits: confessional but guarded, scintillating but deep and dark. The songs carry listeners through the depths of grief, the fog of coping and the light and transcendence of moving on. Lyrically, the songs on Can't Even are romantic and brooding. We listen to a narrator pushing against the life forces he can't - or won't - understand as he struggles with the very idea of his world coming undone. The combination of clever, thoughtful lyrics that plead, exhort and joke with the album's sonically expansive instrumentation and hooky melodies. The result is a richness in dynamics and texture. Over the span of several years, the band spent countless late nights developing the 11 songs showcased on Can't Even. Black Books has crafted an extraordinarily agile record that accomplishes so much musically, from stripped down, heart-rending songs like "Heaven Help Us" to driving dream pop songs like "Really Nice To See You." Much of the music was recorded, mixed and mastered at the band's long-time home studio and refuge, Test Tube Audio, owned and operated by the band's guitarist, songwriter and producer, Kevin Butler. Recording also took place at The Fathom Tree Studio in South Austin and Orb Recording Studios just outside of Austin city limits on U.S. 290. Can't Even shows a band of old friends returned from extraordinary journeys - finding solace in each other and catharsis in the process of creating art - to capture their collective experiences in a powerful, moving, cohesive album of sublime beauty. Black Books will be performing live throughout Texas, and are not ruling out hitting the road to promote Can't Even. Press: "Black Books make me want to go out into my backyard and built the skeletal underpinnings for a set of wings" - DAYTROTTER "It's like listening to Band of Horses underwater. similar to that euphoric high portrayed in Tarantino films." - SYFFAL "Glazing muscular space rock with dream-pop pastels, this Texas ensemble perform their chemistry at full throttle" - Earmilk