Released Digitally Today on Kill Rock Stars
Available on Vinyl + CD May 30
Take Me Out To a Bar / What Am I, Gatsby? purchase link
Listen / Share: “Soundtrack”
Photo Credit: Sarah Mary Chadwick
Born in New Zealand of Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Pākehā descent and currently based in Naarm/Melbourne, producer, songwriter, vocalist and visual artist, Sarah Mary Chadwick has released her ninth studio album Take Me To a Bar / What Am I, Gatsby? digitally today on Kill Rock Stars. Fans can look out for the physical CD & Vinyl release on May 30 as well as some special remixes coming soon. Earning acclaim spanning Rolling Stone, BrooklynVegan, Exclaim!, NPR “Into Music”, InsideHook, Guitar Girl Magazine, Northern Transmissions and more, she is thrilled to share powerful final album single “Soundtrack”. The new song represents the moment that she started to think about writing music for other people – as the lyric goes: ‘Can you hold this tune?‘ Sarah shares, “This song is what I wanted the record to be, a mood under everything. I like giving presents and giving a song is nice, I think. Or art, my paintings. TAKE MY ART, TAKE IT PLEASE!”
Each of Chadwick’s records marks a moment in time. This new collection signals the beginnings of control and self-renovation. Words written unconsciously that are always five steps ahead of her own actual awareness. After a lifetime of alcohol use disorder, she got sober immediately after recording this record. ”I can hear it,” says Chadwick. “The desolate desire for change, the goodbyes, the fading romance, the memories. And the pain- that’s different but that never leaves, it’s part of me.”
Chadwick knows what the right song — or the wrong song — can do to a room. And Take Me Out To a Bar / What Am I, Gatsby? marks a deliberate pivot. This new devastating record seems to emanate from a dive bar jukebox. Something that can survive, fulfill its purpose, comfort or delight while fearlessly beckoning listeners into her sunken universe. Intended to be less demanding for the listener, “something that you can dip in and out of, phrases that tilt the room for a moment but allow space for the listener to inhabit or leave”, with an abject awareness that “last call” is approaching.
This new collection pivots like a broken lullaby around stop-you-in-your-tracks lyrics and a low lit bar. Glasses tinkling, smoky scattered laughter and the banal becoming beautiful as the pianist creates the mood, anonymous and as romantic as a streetlight under the gentle ebbs and flows of intimate chatter. Chadwick sees Take Me Out To a Bar / What Am I,Gatsby? as the elegant-aspiring sibling of ‘the tantrum record’ Me And Ennui Are Friends, Baby, 2021.
Take Me Out To a Bar / What Am I, Gatsby? was co-produced by Chadwick and Chris Townend at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art’s Frying Pan Studios. To create the dreamy and cinematic feel of the record, Townend screwed contact mics to the piano’s body, played the entire album back through it with the sustain pedal held down by a sandbag, and recorded that resonating, a natural reverb — close, claustral, — that cradles each song the way a music box shelters its melody. “These days the most punk thing you can do is be resourceful,” Chadwick shrugs, “Making choices is free.”
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