Lou Barlow already has a new Dinosaur Jr. album coming out next month, and now the Dino Jr./Sebadoh/Folk Implosion musician is announcing a solo record too: Reason To Live, which will arrive a month later. “This album is me really opening up, and the album follows that through its many different themes,” Barlow says. “Some of my other work could be almost claustrophobic in its insistence on being all tied together but there’s space for people to live inside these songs.”

“People have this vision of me as this heartbroken, depressed guy, but this record feels so true to who I am, to this rich life I now have full of people I love,” Barlow adds in a statement. “The songs culminated over the last five years to show that music has returned to its central comforting role in my life. Now I’m home.”

Reason To Live will include a version of “Love Intervene,” a track that Barlow originally wrote and shared in 2018. And it’ll also feature a warm, strummy new track called “Over You.” As Barlow explains:

“Over You” is based on one melody and lyric fragment I captured on cassette back in 1982 or so. In 2019, I decided to resurrect and expand this nugget for my “Artist Enabler Series” for Joyful Noise. I used some of the original lyrics: “I knew everything about you. I knew nothing about you” and built on that feeling, the phrase “over you” became the chorus. I recorded the basic tracks for the new version onto cassette in an attempt to mimic the atmosphere of the original.

When considering the video I talked to my wife, Adelle, about things in our lives that we’ve never been “over.” We moved from California six years ago, a place that we both loved. We started compiling home videos from our times living there (17 years in my case) and scenes from some 80’s movies that were filmed in LA. When we combined the footage it seemed to work with the song. I can’t say that I was thinking about anything specifically when I recorded Over You, it came from the general longing of my teenage years, but I can definitely say I miss the golden state.

Watch and listen to “Over You” below.

Reason To Live is out 5/28 on Joyful Noise. Pre-order it here.