Here's a note from Laura about the track, which was released via Saddle Creek:

In early 2016, the touring for my last Mynabirds’ record, Lovers Know, was winding down and I was convinced I was going to die. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t see anything in front of me. When I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my future, I saw a yawning black void. No music. No touring. Nothing. But instead of feeling bleak about it, I was surprisingly comforted and full of gratitude for everything I’ve gotten to do and see and experience in my life. Maybe it was Oliver Sacks’ Gratitude I’d just read (the collection of essays he wrote knowing full well he’d soon die of terminal cancer), or the Zen Buddhism I’ve been easing into over the past years, but I felt seared awake to my own mortality and strangely calm about it.  I had no idea what I was doing. But for the first time in my life just that thought “I have no idea what I’m doing” sounded like a punchline. It made me laugh out loud. Because who the fuck does know what they’re doing anyway?? And if no one knows what they’re doing, why are we all worrying about it all the time?

“Apples & Oranges” came from that. It’s very much a meditation on being human, on the fact that we’re all born, and we all die. We’re going to get some things right, and a lot wrong, but in the end all that matters is that we get to connect for a little breath of time. It’s no big deal — all the empires that rise and fall every day; and it turns out all the littlest things matter most.

American singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn is a shape-shifter who can’t sit still. Since 2010 she’s worked under the moniker The Mynabirds, releasing three critically acclaimed and stylistically different albums on Saddle Creek: What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood(2010), GENERALS (2012), and Lovers Know (2015). She has also toured as a member of the Postal Service (2013) and Bright Eyes (2011), helped found Omaha Girls Rock (a non-profit helping young girls find their voices), and in 2013 gave a TED talk based on her “New Revolutionists” portrait project, exploring what it means to be a revolutionary woman in this day and age. Before the Mynabirds, Laura was a member of DC indie band Georgie James with Q And Not U’s John Davis, and also put out two self-produced solo albums on the label she founded herself, Laboratory Records.

Tour Dates:

10.31 // St. Louis, MO // Firebird (Tickets)

11.01 // Kansas City, MO // The Record Bar (Tickets)

11.03 // Denver, CO // Daniels Hall @ Swallow Hill (Tickets)

11.04 // Fort Collins, CO // Downtown Artery (Tickets)

11.05 // Salt Lake City, UT // The State Room (Tickets)

11.06 // Boise, ID // The Olympic (Tickets)

11.09 // Seattle, WA // Triple Door (Tickets )

11.10 // Portland, OR // Doug Fir Lounge (Tickets )

11.12 // Sacramento, CA // Harlow's (Tickets)

11.13 // Petaluma, CA // Mystic Theater (Tickets)

11.14 // San Francisco, CA // Slim's (Tickets)

11.15 // West Hollywood, CA // Troubadour (Tickets)

11.18 // San Diego, CA // Casbah (Tickets)

11.19 // Phoenix, AZ // Valley Bar (Tickets)

11.20 // Santa Fe, NM // Meow Wolf (Tickets)

11.28 // New York, NY // LPR - Le Poisson Rouge (Tickets)

11.29 // Boston, MA // Cafe 939 (Tickets)

11.30 // South Burlington, VT // Higher Ground (Tickets)

12.01 // Montreal, QC // L'Astral (Tickets)

12.02 // Toronto, ON // The Great Hall (Tickets)

12.04 // Evanston, IL // SPACE (Tickets)

photo by Bliss Katherine