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Grace Cummings Shares New Single “Up In Flames” – New Album Due 14th January via ATO Records

November 11, 2021

Grace Cummings

Shares new single, “Up In Flames”

London headline show on 9th March

New album Storm Queen out 14th January, 2022

Melbourne-based singer, songwriter, producer and accomplished stage actor Grace Cummings announces her forthcoming, self-produced second album. 

Storm Queen will be released 14th January via ATO Records and is available to preorder here. The album follows Cummings’ understated debut Refuge Cove, which was released in 2019 via King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s Flightless Records.

True to its title, Storm Queen is a body of work with its own unruly climate, governed only by the visceral quality of Cummings’ spellbinding and devastating vocal presence, as heard on stage opening for the likes of Weyes Blood, Evan Dando, J Mascis and more. With most songs captured within the first few takes and featuring unexpected flourishes by Cummings’ peers in Melbourne, Storm Queen showcases a vast and volatile emotional landscape from one of the most captivating folk artists to enter the scene in years.

Grace Cummings demands your full attention within all their creations. “Up In Flames” brings this delicate attribute to the forefront of the ensemble, just Grace and the acoustic guitar. Whilst the ambiance is based on two catalysts- vocals and the strings, Grace’s fierce vocal delivery, and flawless dynamic vocal range will leave you in awe.

The power this artist conveys within their arrangement is something so unique and addictive. Grace pulls you into this emotional voyage, the audience hooked on that striking appeal of this visionary musician. Dynamically she begins to manipulate that emotional fragility that emits from the lyrics and the compelling tones on offer. Twisting through this unpredictable lyrical story that showcases the importance of the calmer passages to the mighty intensive peaks.

Grace Cummings has also announced news of a London headline show on Wednesday 9th March at St Matthias Church in Stoke Newington. Tickets are available here.

True to its title, Storm Queen is a body of work with its own unruly climate, governed only by the visceral quality of Cummings’ spellbinding and devastating vocal presence, as heard on stage opening for the likes of Weyes Blood, Evan Dando, J Mascis and more. With most songs captured within the first few takes and featuring unexpected flourishes by Cummings’ peers in Melbourne, Storm Queen showcases a vast and volatile emotional landscape from one of the most captivating folk artists to enter the scene in years.

A near-lifelong musician, Cummings got her start as a drummer in a series of high school bands whose repertoire largely consisted of AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix covers. As she began writing songs of her own, she mined inspiration from artists like seminal Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, Bob Dylan, and Spiritualized frontman J Spaceman, as well as from the traditional Irish folk music her father often played at home. “Irish melodies are some of my favourites; they go to such dark and dramatic places,” she says. Soon after striking out as a solo artist in the late 2010s, Cummings landed a deal with Flightless Records (a Melbourne-based record label founded by former King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard drummer Eric Moore). Having attended drama school, she’s also spent much of the past decade performing in the Australian theatre, and recently played the lead role in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Joanna Murray-Smith’s Berlin. Noting her eternal fondness for Shakespeare Cummings has found her lyrical sensibilities indelibly informed by certain literary influences. “To me poems and stories are sometimes more of an inspiration than music, because they don’t give you a melody: you have to just imagine your own,” she says. 

Over the years, Cummings has matched her idiosyncratic musicality with a deliberately spontaneous approach to songwriting. “I don’t really do that thing where I lock myself away and sit down at a table like, ‘Right, let’s write a song now,’” she says. “If I feel like I have something I want to write, I just get it all out in the moment.” And in the studio, Cummings remained wholly committed to following her deepest and most immediate instinct. “I’m not precious at all about recording; it just doesn’t make sense to me,” she says. “I am who I am and I sound how I sound, and I’m not really interested in going in like some kind of magician to try to make it sound any different.” 

In the making of Storm Queen, Cummings reinforced the self-possessed naturalism at the heart of her artistry, ultimately distilling her vision down to its most elemental essence. “In the past there were times when I’ve let other people’s opinions affect me too much,” she says. “But with this record I learned that I’m allowed to influence myself instead of taking in anyone else’s ideas. I learned to completely trust what I see and hear in my head, and I stuck with that and just focused on creating what I love the most: something real and raw and ugly and beautiful.


Tracklisting
1. Heaven
2. Always New Days Always
3. Dreams
4. Up in Flames
5. Freak
6. Here is the Rose
7. Raglan
8. Two Little Birds
9. This Day in May
10. Storm Queen
11. Fly a Kite

Preorder
https://atorecords-ffm.com/stormqueen

https://www.facebook.com/gracecummingsmusic

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