Super XX Man (pronounced "super double X man") has been founding member Scott Garred’s main creative outlet since 1995. In that time, his music has been featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered, he’s been covered by Courtney Barnett, and he’s played sets for KEXP, CMJ, SXSW, and Bob Boilen’s Tiny Desk Concert series. To celebrate three decades of music, Super XX Man will release their nineteenth album, Rusted Hues, in June of 2025. 

Rusted Hues began to take shape last year when Garred received an email from former bandmate Ali Wesley about collaborating on new music. He had a batch of songs, some of his best ones yet, but he wasn’t sure if he could share them. “I felt like with these songs I was writing about the gritty details of my life, which isn’t solely my own now that I have a family,” Garred says. Nevertheless, Garred reached out to some other former bandmates and found many were still available and happy to contribute to a new Super XX Man album. “Ultimately, I knew I was sharing these songs with some really trustworthy people who were going to have my back throughout the whole process.”

Garred offered up 30 songs to choose from, including three from an intensely personal album called Carnation that he shelved in 2015. Together, he and his bandmates selected twelve songs of quiet vulnerability for Rusted Hues. The resulting album blended Garred’s original home recordings with remote contributions and a two-day recording session with Wesley (flute, vocals), Adam Mack (drums), and Tony Moreno (atmospheric noise and guitar) at Adam Selzer’s home studio in Portland, Oregon.

Since releasing the first cassette back in 1995, "Super XX Man became whoever was around. That was what made it so fun. A song could turn on a dime depending on the musicians working on it.” "Rusted Hues,” a tender meditation on the beauty found in decay and renewal, is a good example. Originally sparse and rhythmic, the song gained a new vibrancy with Selzer’s arrangement: Wesley’s flute replaced the Casio keyboard, Mack’s drums strengthened the ukulele’s steady strum, and Moreno’s atmospheric touches added a dreamlike quality to Garred’s singing.

Sometimes, however, the biggest changes are the ones you don’t make. For instance, Garred nearly discarded the closing track, "Hold on to Me.” He wrote it as a reflection on his child’s struggles, and Garred wasn’t sure its deeply personal subject matter was fully his to share. With Selzer and Wesley’s encouragement, Garred sought and received his kid’s blessing, and the song became an emotional cornerstone of the album.

For the production, Garred extended the same trust to Selzer (M. Ward, Peter Buck) that he did with his bandmates. “This is the first Super XX Man album where I didn’t make the final decision on how the instruments sit together. I imagine [Selzer] thought I’d have a lot of changes, but we maybe revised two songs and that was it. I just loved everything that Adam did on this album so much that I accepted it as he presented it.”

In choosing the cover art for Rusted Hues, Garred selected a mixed media piece that features old paint and found objects called Alley Puddles (Sarah Heller). “Rusted Hues feels like a fairly eclectic album,” Garred offers by way of explanation. “From song to song, you get a shift in tonality and texture. It feels a little rusty to me, as the colors gradually bleed into each other the way rust does on an old metal surface. I think when people see Sarah’s piece, it will make sense. There are beautiful colors in there with a little bit of darkness, just like the album.”

Limited copies of Rusted Hues will be available on LP through the band’s Bandcamp page in early 2025 with a full release on streaming platforms everywhere on May 22, 2025.

by Daniel Couch