Nick Granata - My Heart is Running Backwards! A Martial Artist! With a Closed Fist! Woof! (2026) [Hi-Res]

My Heart is Running Backwards! A Martial Artist! With a Closed Fist! Woof! is the debut solo album by Nick Granata, a member of traditional folk band, Shovel Dance Collective.

Nick plays all the instruments including viola, violin, voice, trumpet (sans mouthpiece), guitar, train whistle, tin whistle, saxophone, electric piano, mixed percussion, and pump organ. Mostly written between 2019 and 2023 and recorded at home, it's a slight divergence from their work with traditional music that ran concurrent with the early years of the collective, applying the values of folk storytelling to personal subject matter. In some ways it’s also reliant on Nick’s work in traditional music (which was also new to them during those years) as a liberating force from the myth of the singular, entirely original artistic voice.

My Heart… is awash with influence and wears it on its sleeve, reaching for the uniqueness of experience and time that exists in contraction to the borrowed nature of everything. As the name suggests, My Heart… is undeniably and slightly embarrassingly a feelings record, gritting its teeth and fighting with the past, only to result in an unintelligible, laughable (but maybe also cryable), wail of ambivalence (woof!).