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Soak Returns With 'Everybody Loves You'

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Soak is back with beautiful new single 'Everybody Loves You', which is available now on Rough Trade Records. Bridie has also confirmed a handful of intimate live shows for next month, including a London show at Omeara on November 29. Still just 22 years old, 'Everybody Loves You' may firmly shake off any shackles of the skating teenage tomboy who first introduced herself with the timeless 'Sea Creatures', but it retains that alchemy of old-soul wisdom and youthful positivity which are quintessentially Soak's own.

'Everybody Loves You' is the first sight of new Soak material since 2015's critically-acclaimed debut album, Before We Forgot How To Dream. One of the Mercury Prize's youngest ever nominees, the record also won the prestigious Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, the Northern Irish Music Prize, saw Soak shortlisted for a Q Award ('Best New Act'), as well as taking home the European Border Breaker Award. With extensive global touring along the way - and extreme experiences which have taken her far beyond (but often back to) her close-knit hometown of Derry - Bridie has been hard at work on her forthcoming second album, which will see a release next year.

'Everybody Loves You' offers a window into the tightly-constructed world of Soak's second record, and also an unflinchingly-honest portrait of where Bridie (and, indeed, many of her generation who love easily, but struggle to love themselves) now arrive. Here is an artist often hypothesising over the future whilst simultaneously looking back to the past for answers to The Big Questions - on what happens next, when you have supposedly grown up and moved on; on how possible true change (internal, external) ever really is; and, perhaps, remembering those things that matter and you take with you always, as you embark on another adventure.

Live Dates

November 26th - Belfast, Oh Yeah

November 27th - Dublin, The Grand Social

November 28th - Manchester, Jimmy’s NQ

November 29th - London, Omeara

 

 

 

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Zola Jesus Shares New Single 'Soak'

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'Soak' is the second song from Zola Jesus’ forthcoming album Okovi, which is set for release on September 8. Furthering the intense narrative of Okovi, 'Soak' is written through the lens of serial killer’s victim, clinging to life and about to be dumped in the water. “I was thinking about this crucial moment inside the victim’s mind, when she knows she’s going to die. She thinks back at her life and the futility of the decisions she made, when in the end her life would be cut short against her will,” says Zola Jesus of the track.

“What’s the point of trying to navigate life if you don’t even get to choose how it ends? Instead of letting her fate be determined by someone else, she takes back control and turns it around, so instead, in her mind, she is choosing to die. She lets the killer assist her in suicide, as she gets tossed into the water and slowly drowns. Through writing this song the story evolved within me, and I saw how it mirrored my own feelings inside."

For over a decade, Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus. She’s been on Sacred Bones Records for most of that time, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label. Fittingly, the 11 electronics-driven songs on Okovi share musical DNA with her early work on Sacred Bones. The music was written in pure catharsis, and as a result, the sonics are heavy, dark, and exploratory. In addition to the contributions of Danilova’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, producer/musician wife, cellist/noise-maker Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit, and percussionist Ted Byrnes all helped build Okovi’s textural universe.

With Okovi, Zola Jesus has crafted a profound meditation on loss and reconciliation that stands tall alongside the major works of its genre. The album speaks of tragedy with great wisdom and clarity. Its songs plumb dark depths, but they reflect light as well. "Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth.  Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas.

While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will.

Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back.  Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?

This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family."

Zola Jesus Tour Dates:

29/10 - Brighton, UK - The Haunt

31/10 - Glasgow, UK - St. Luke’s

01/11 - Manchester, UK - Band on the Wall

02/11 - Leeds, UK - Belgrave Music Hall

03/11 - Norwich, UK - Arts Centre

04/11 - Liverpool, UK - Stanley Theatre

06/11 - Dublin, IE - Whelan’s

 

07/11 - London, UK - Village Underground

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