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AMBER ARCADES shares new single, “Alpine Town”, taken from European Heartbreak due 28th September 2018 via Heavenly Recordings + tour dates in Oct

July 24, 2018

Photo Credit: Nick Helderman

 

AMBER ARCADES

Shares her new single, “Alpine Town”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmZc5mkW2M

Taken from her upcoming second album, European Heartbreak, out 28th September 2018 via Heavenly Recordings

Tours the UK in October with a show at The Dome in London on 10th October 2018

 

Amber Arcades today shares “Alpine Town” – another cut from her upcoming second album, European Heartbreak, due for release on 28th September 2018 via Heavenly Recordings. The Dutch-born musician, real name Annelotte De Graaf, said the following about “Alpine Town”:

“I wrote this song exactly a year ago while on holiday in Guillestre, a small town in the French Alps. I was kind of in a sad place and my boyfriend had dragged me along to get away from all that, but I guess it doesn’t really work like that, ha. It just made me reflect on the sad part of the tourist condition as a metaphor for life, man.”

“Alpine Town” follows the release of “Goodnight Europe”  and “Simple Song”   These singles featured accompanying videos forming parts 1 and 2 in a video trilogy aiming to give a deeper understanding of the album and De Graaf’s thinking around what is currently happening in Europe, love, the passing of time and how the three intertwine. Both feature music from European Heartbreak, and part 3 is to follow soon.

Following a show at London’s Omeara last month and an appearance at Bluedot Festivalover the weekend, Amber Arcades will return to the UK to play Green Man Festival and Festival No.6, before embarking on a full UK tour in October. The tour will include her biggest London show to date at The Dome on 10th October 2018.
Full live dates are as follows with UK shows in bold:

Thursdy 26th July – The Portland Arms, Cambridge
Friday 27th July – The Cellar, Oxford
Saturday 28th July – Indietracks, Derbyshire

Sunday 12th August – Planet Oedipus Festival, Amsterdam
Friday 17th August – Green Man Festival, Crickhowell
Friday 7th September – Festival No. 6, Portmeirion
Wednesday 3rd October – The Exchange, Bristol
Thursday 4th October – The Deaf Institute, Manchester
Friday 5th October – Mono, Glasgow
Saturday 6th October – Think Tank, Newcastle
Sunday 7th October – The Polar Bear, Hull
Tuesday 9th October – Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds
Friday 12th October – The Haunt, Brighton

Thursday 25th October – Rotown, Rotterdam
Friday 26th October – Sugarfactory, Amsterdam
Saturday 27th October – Merelyn, Nijmegen


European Heartbreak was recorded and co-produced in LA with Chris Cohen from Deerhoof and in Richmond, Virginia with Trey Pollard (Natalie Prass, The Waterboys, Bedouine) who oversaw horn and string overdubs from Spacebomb. A vast step forward from her critically acclaimed debut album Fading Lines, this selection of songs flit around Europe, from Berlin to Spain to the south of France. It’s European not just in lyrical theme but in the sly sophistication of its music: songs that carry with them the air of open-topped cars on clifftop roads, of cocktails on the terrace at sunset. And then the lyrics undercut that sunny mood, artfully and skilfully.

European Heartbreak is about the nature of past and memory and our tendency to over-romanticise the events of our lives. It also deals with the passage of time, the relationship between past, present and future. And what is revealed, as the past is examined, is the disillusionment that had been concealed behind the carapace of romance. “Alpine Town”, “Oh My Love”, “Something’s Gonna Take Your Love Away” and “Goodnight Europe” encapsulate the album, digging into the themes of the record the most. Tourism, the romanticising of the past and of new love, how everything moves in cycles, the way things always change but never really change, our fluid concepts of nationality and identity… Both in politics and in love. European Heartbreak is an album that feels devastatingly truthful, precisely because it admits the lies.

Annelotte said the following about the album:

“If it were called American Heartbreak, you wouldn’t bat an eye. Somehow calling it European Heartbreak feels far less comfortable, almost like a statement in itself. I’m Dutch, hence European. The focus of the record is Europe. As for Heartbreak, for me a heartbreak symbolises any kind of falling apart of one of these concepts or stories we invent for ourselves, like romantic love, a sense of identity, nationality, an economic system. It’s kind of a universal thing in my mind.”

After recording sessions in LA, Annelotte embarked on a week-long road trip through California’s national parks ending up in Death Valley, viewing the sunset from a famous vantage point. Surrounded by tourists with their smartphones, all very much not of their environment, the moment captured the sense of alientation that haunts the album’s 11 songs. Everything clicked, it all came together: our quest for meaning, our ongoing existential crisis, our desire to live life to the fullest, and our need to convince ourselves we are doing so and to try to prove it to the world: through something as mundane as holiday photos. Photos taken at this moment would end up forming the album artwork and imagery.

You can take all that from European Heartbreak. On the other hand, of course, you can just hear one of the year’s best pop records, and relish the skill of the writing, the depth of the production, the insidiousness of the melodies. It depends how far you want to lift the veil of life.


European Heartbreak is available to pre-order here. The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Simple Song
2. Hardly Knew
3. Oh My Love (What Have We Done)
4. Goodnight Europe
5. Alpine Town
6. I’ve Done The Best
7. Self-Portrait In A Car At Night
8. Something’s Gonna Take Your Love Away
9. Antoine
10. Where Did You Go
11. Baby, Eternity

European Heartbreak Album Art:

Alpine Town Single Art

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