TRACEY THORN PREPARES NEW ALBUM FOR MARCH 2 RELEASE
HEAR THE LEAD SINGLE “QUEEN” NOW
Merge Records
Tracey Thorn reveals her new single βQueen,β the first song to be taken from her first solo album of entirely original material in seven years. Titled Record, the new album will be released on March 2. Watch the Carol Morley-directed video for βQueenβ now, and pre-order the album on CD and smoky red Peak Vinyl in the Merge store, where each format can be bundled with a beautiful full-color Tracey Thorn zine featuring 20 pages of handwritten lyrics and photos from the recording sessions. Record is also available for pre-order through your preferred independent record store and digital music service.
Describing βQueen,β Tracey says: βItβs a great opener for the album. Driven along by Ewan Pearsonβs unashamedly glittering electro-pop production, and drums and bass from Warpaintβs Stella and Jenny, it features me playing electric guitar for the first time in a while, and singing my heart out”.
As ever, the personal has often been political in Tracey Thornβs work. βNine feminist bangers,β Tracey jokes when asked to describe Record. If this album is in part about freedom and disenthrallment, new single βQueenβ is the opening broadside, all personal fire and desire. Her voice, self-assured and richly textured yet confessional and affecting, spits out the lyrics on Record with a fresh, compelling drive and remains one of the finest female pop voices of the last four decades.
βI think Iβve always written songs which chronicle the milestones of a womanβs life,β she says. βDifferent ages and stages, different realities not often discussed in pop lyrics. If 2010βs Love and Its Opposite was my mid-life albumβfull of divorce and hormonesβthen Record represents that sense of liberation that comes in the aftermath, from embarking on a whole new βno fucks givenβ phase of life.β
On Record, the synth-driven tracks arrive and leave with a punchy sub-three-minute directness. βI wanted it to be a record youβd listen to in the daytime,β Tracey says. βOn your headphones or on the move. Not necessarily in the evening, or in your bedroom.β For all its no-fuss pop brevity, the album rotates around βSister,β a dubby nine-minute Compass Point-style disco jam where Tracey is joined again by Warpaintβs rhythm section and glorious backing vocals from Corinne Bailey Rae.
Across four decades, Traceyβs songs and writing have offered up a clear-eyed womanβs view of the immediate world around her, from the acerbic teen love songs of her first early-eighties band Marine Girls, through sixteen years as one half of articulate multi-million-selling duo Everything But The Girl, to her recent acclaimed memoirs and journalism.
Tracey Thorn
Record
(Merge Records)
Release Date: March 2, 2018
ArtistΒ Links
