Now that we’re more than a year past the point when practically the entirety of the live music business shut down, it will be interesting to see if there are discernible impacts on the release of studio efforts. Maybe Molly Burch would have had a new album prepped and ready to go this year anyway, but it’s clear that the unwelcome shuttering of venues led directly to the gleaming new track that dropped this week. After her 2020 tour dates were postponed, Burch left her home base of Austin and did her locking down with Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, the husband and wife team behind the band Tennis, enlisting them as producers while she worked through new material. Lithe and alluring, “Control” is evidence that the collaboration was as winning as Burch reports.

Also, while it doesn’t really have anything to do with the quality of the track, there is one more thing I feel compelled to add. As a fellow former Ashevillian, I can back up Burch’s contention that the wares of Mamacita’s Taqueria are worthy of distant pining.

Burch’s fourth studio album, Romantic Images, is scheduled for release in July.