AUSTRA ANNOUNCES CANADIAN TOUR DATES BEGINNING AUGUST 18
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ALBUM FUTURE POLITICS OUT NOW
Beginning August 18, Austra will return to Canada for a run of tour dates across Canada including festival dates at Pop Montreal,Ponderosa Music Festival, and stops throughout the prairies. Full tour dates can be found below.
Austra’s third LP, Future Politics, is the Montreal band’s most ambitious record to date and calls for radical hope: “a commitment to replace the approaching dystopia,” says Katie Stelmanis, who leads Austra with the support of Maya Postepski (Princess Century, TR/ST), Dorian Wolf, and Ryan Wonsiak.
Future Politics is a collection of urgent, disciplined anthems for dancefloors and headphones alike, that asks each of us to remember that apocalypse is not an inevitability, but the product of human decision-making. It aims for a world without borders, where human compassion and curiosity drive technological innovation rather than profit, where the necessity of labour is replaced with time for creativity and personal growth, and the terror and destruction wrought by colonialism and white supremacy is recognized as a dark age in human history. The album is radicalism distilled: to galvanic beats, gorgeous, kinetic melodies, and the vulnerable majesty of Stelmanis’s voice.
Inspired by her time living in two cities – Montreal and Mexico City – and propelled by economic and philosophical texts she was reading throughout the album’s creation, Stelmanis was driven to face the world’s ailments with positivity, purpose, and engagement, rather than detachment or despair. Inspiration also came from European club culture – Objekt, Peter Van Hoesen, Lena Willikens as well as the likes of Massive Attack; in all, artists who understand the dancefloor as a source of radical ideas and radical joy.
Change, Rebecca Solnit (author, activist, environmentalist and editor at Harper’s Magazine) writes, comes from “writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media”. Stelmanis adds “artists, club scenes, parties, teenagers, ghettoes” to that list -“every single person’s idea about the future is valid and relevant, especially the freaks and the queers and the outsiders.”
Full Tour Dates
Jun 23 – Evreux, FR – Rock In Evreux
Jun 25 – Meath, IR – Body & Soul Festival
Jul 6 – Bilbao, ES – Bilbao BBK Live
Jul 7 – Trencin, SK – Pohoda Festival
Jul 8 – Duesseldorf, DE – Open Source Festival
Jul 9 – Siena, IT – Lars Rock Fest
Jul 10 – Sesto al Reghena, IT – Piazza Castello
Jul 11 – Bologna, IT – Covo Club
Jul 14 – Salacgriva, LV – Positivus
Jul 19 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Jul 20 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
Jul 21 – Seattle, WA – The Capitol Hill Block Party
Aug 18 – Rock Creek, BC – Ponderosa Arts & Music Festival (Tickets)
Aug 19 – Toronto, ON – Harbourfront Centre
Aug 20 – Elora, ON – RiverFest (Tickets)
Sep 14 – Montreal, QC – Pop Montreal (Tickets)
Sep 15 – Ottawa, ON – Mavericks
Sep 16 – Hamilton, ON – The Casbah
Sep 17 – Waterloo, ON – Starlight
Sep 18 – London, ON – London Music Hall
Sep 22 – Winnipeg, MB – Park Theatre
Sep 23 – Saskatoon, SK – The Capitol Music Club
Sep 26 – Edmonton, AB – The Needle Vinyl Tavern
Sep 27 – Calgary, AB – Commonwealth
Sep 29 – Vancouver, BC – Imperial
Sep 30 – Victoria, BC – Sugar Nightclub
Artist Links
(Photo Credit: Renata Raksha)
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