Middle Sattre

Middle Satre: “Corrupted (Uncorrupted)”

Welcome! Today’s theme is vision and reimagining. After spending a childhood in Salt Lake City, Hunter Preuger moved to Austin to sow oats with his project Middle Sattre. The project quickly expanded into a six-piece…and then an eight-piece, and a year after the release of their debut album Tendencies, the experimental folk outfit returned to the studio a full octet deep to revisit the group’s song “Corrupted.”

This isn’t some half-baked reimagining where you just throw in an extra string part and call it a day. This is a full-blown rebirth of the song, and from the first note, you hear the differences. The heartbeat is still there, and it’s a brilliant practice in taking something that was perfectly solid and making it absolutely transcendent. And it’s that right kind of Mother Falcon and Elliott Smith energy that makes for a perfect chilly, cozy Monday.

 “Corrupted (Uncorrupted)” is out now.

Middle Sattre: “Hate Yourself to the Core”

The 1998 flick SLC Punk! entertained audiences with all kinds of counterculture cliques, and in doing so, they also exposed Utah’s more ingrained sociopolitical climate – that of Reagan-era republicans, yuppies, and the Mormon church. Whether or not the movie feels “authentic” to you, it’s not unreasonable to guess there’ve been plenty more who’ve felt oppressed in the SLC area since the turn of the millennium.

Take for instance singer-songwriter Hunter Prueger, who spent much of his life repressing his intrinsically gay identity under strict Mormon tutelage. Solo home recordings in Salt Lake City, borrowing from the DIY philosophies of noise music, provided Prueger with some much-needed solace. In 2022 Prueger’s project Middle Sattre (pronounced “sat-tree”) relocated to the so-called “blueberry in the tomato soup” here in Austin, Texas, and soon expanded into a six-piece, then eventually the experimental folk octet we know today. Unbound by obsolescent beliefs, this eight-piece continues to defy convention, even when it comes to how their instruments are played.

Middle Sattre embarked on their maiden tour last July, shared their first studio single “Pouring Water” in September, and followed that up with powerful pair of originals in November. All of this sets the stage of Middle Sattre’s debut album, Tendencies, out February 9th. At just shy of an hour long and sporting song titles like “I Once Felt Safe”, “Imperfect Hands”, and “Seven Years Since the Fall”, Tendencies is a deeply confessional saga of queer self-acceptance. That vulnerable, candid character glows throughout the record’s fourth lead single, “Hate Yourself to the Core”, releasing midnight tonight. Its lyrics chronicle Prueger’s deep-seated anguish, ideations of self-harm, and repeated depletions of self-esteem, and its gorgeous string sonics perfectly capture such shared experiences of disquiet. When combined, “Hate Yourself to the Core” sounds like a next generation Elliott Smith song that can comfort anyone who’s ever faced similar desperation.