The fall chill is in the air, but Orbiting Human Circus are keeping it cozy with “How Long Has This Been Going On,” the new single from their November 17 album Quartet Plus Two. Listen to “How Long Has This Been Going On” wherever you stream music, and pre-order Quartet Plus Two on CD, LP, or natural and pink swirl Peak Vinyl from the Merge store!

The song, a George and Ira Gershwin showtune, finds its protagonist swept away with the first blushes of love, a charming narrative that finds its match in Julian Koster, who has been singing “How Long Has This Been Going On” as part of his repertoire for years. 

He explains:

This song became a special part of our “caroling tours” over a decade ago. These tours were one of my favorite life experiences, and I hope to do them again someday. In each city, we would perform in several houses a night, sometimes as many as six. People would make their own kind of holiday evening at home. Sometimes as few as two or three people would gather, and a few times we did it for just one. In many houses, there were so many people you could barely move; often, these were the houses opened up to strangers who also wanted to take part in it. We would wind our way through the night to each house, bringing a show full of songs, stories, and games that we could set up, miraculously,  in a matter of moments. We all spent those nights with a feeling of adventure and holiday—not material holidays, but rather the feeling of the holidays that live in our imagination.

I took to singing “How Long Has This Been Going On” during these shows. I sometimes feel that unwritten songs haunt our world, and that when they find a person to give birth to them, these spirits become incarnate. The spirit of this song is a love that can warm a room like a light. The protagonist of the song may be singing about discovering love anew, but when this song is happening in a room, it is one of those moments in life that allows us to realize: “Yes, love is here.” And that’s why I love singing it.

Here, Koster transforms the song again, approaching the woozy conviviality of a carol by way of vocal jazz. It’s a showcase for his bandmates in Orbiting Human Circus, particularly those of the titular quartet’s Gauvain Gamon (bass), Kolja Gjoni (drums), and Benji Miller (piano), whose intimate jazz marries Koster’s uncanny ability to possess the spirit of a song. The warmth and light Koster has imbued the song with remains, but when propelled by the trio and accompanied by Robbie Cucchiaro (horns) and the singing saws, there’s a sudden, epic heft to the eureka moment of “How Long Has This Been Going On,” like an entire world is changing in its wake.

The song is one of the centerpieces of Quartet Plus Two, an album that feels at once familiar and entirely new. This is true of the songs, of course, but also of Julian Koster, whose high-wire act of storytelling and song defies career-defining cliches like “watershed moments” but feels decidedly changed in the presence of his bandmates. Orbiting Human Circus is the name Koster has given to his evolving world of creative output, from immersive theater to narrative podcasting to music. It’s in a song like “How Long Has This Been Going On” that you hear how important the artists in Julian Koster’s orbit are to what he does. If he is the light that can warm a room, they are the spirit that animates him.