Indie-folk quintet The National Parks kicked off a national tour last night with Ron Pope. To mark the occasion, the group is releasing a new deluxe version of its third studio record, Places, which features five new tracks. Frontman Brady Parks explains, “So why did we release a deluxe record? The simplest explanation is that we had five recordings we really liked and wanted to share, but they fit so closely with the original album that releasing them as standalone singles or an EP didn’t make sense. One of the new songs, ‘Come Closer,’ is a track we wanted to put on the original album but we just couldn’t get the song to a place we were satisfied with it in time to release it on the original. We didn’t want to give up on it though and — after several reworkings — we are glad we didn’t because we finally ‘found’ the song we were trying to make. ‘Penny’ is an older song that I’ve really loved but it didn’t fit sonically into the arc of the original album even though it fits thematically. And the last three of the five additional tracks are variations – a remix and two acoustic versions. I started as a soloist singer/songwriter so all of these songs have those roots. We’ll occasionally do stripped down/acoustic live shows so it seemed really natural to release some acoustic versions this way.”

Today we share the premiere of Places (Deluxe). The band’s upcoming dates appear below the stream.

The National Parks Tour Dates