23 November 2023 - 0 Comments

Musician, best-selling author, TED speaker, and community leader Amanda Palmer has shared the official music video for Little Island, premiering today on YouTube. A deeply personal duet with legendary Kiwi musician Julia Deans of Fur Patrol, Little Island heralds the arrival of New Zealand Survival Songs, a brand-new five-song EP collecting material written and recorded during that life-changing experience. The EP – which was fully financed by the over 17,000 patrons who support Palmer’s extraordinary crowd-funded career as a touring songwriter and recording artist – will be available Thursday 11 January 2024.

“Little Island is a complicated and heartfelt love letter to New Zealand and to the people who held and took care of me,” says Palmer. “It’s also a reflection on our collectively difficult relationships with the past, and what ‘home’ really means.”

WATCH LITTLE ISLAND OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

What’s more, Palmer will return to Aotearoa for Amanda Palmer Comes Down For a Quick Catch-up: Old Songs, New Songs, New Zealand Survival Songs, an intimate run of concerts in New Zealand. This short tour will see Palmer engaging her devoted fans as only she can, telling stories, revealing the inspiration behind the survival songs, and of course, playing material from her ever-evolving body of work as both solo artist and one-half of The Dresden Dolls, including new songs from the iconic punk cabaret duo’s upcoming new album arranged especially for solo piano.

Tickets will be available to the general public 10am Thursday 23 November.

For complete details, please visit Banished Music: https://banishedmusic.com/amanda-palmer-tour-2024

“It is still shocking to me that I wound up living in Aotearoa, New Zealand – unexpectedly – for over two years of my life,” says Amanda Palmer, “and that my young child was raised in a foreign country while Covid raged around the planet. I came to New Zealand at the end of a world tour and was supposed to be in the country for four show dates and eight days total. I wound up living within the borders for two and half years. Sometimes I wake up in New York and find myself short of breath and cannot believe that this all happened.

“When Covid hit, my life was mangled in four departments at once: I lost my marriage, I lost my country, I lost my artistic identity, and I very nearly lost my mind. I managed to write a song about every six months while I was down there, and they felt more like messages-in-a-bottle to my friends and patrons. These songs kept me tethered to sanity as I grappled with raising a child alone in a place where I had no community. I was very, very scared and very, very lonely. People abroad saw my Instagram feed from afar and would say: 'You're so lucky! It's so beautiful there! And you managed to dodge Covid!', and it's true, New Zealand is gorgeous. But the pictures and little captions could not express the sorrow I felt about the collapse of my marriage, nor the incredible loneliness I felt being overseas with no prediction, nor the gratitude I felt for the strangers who took me and Ash into their homes and befriended us at my darkest hour. The songs did that.

“I wanted to come back for this short tour – not only because I’m homesick for my Kiwi friends, but because I’d like to share the music: the handful of songs that helped me survive this period of my life.”

“AMANDA PALMER COMES DOWN FOR A QUICK CATCH-UP:

OLD SONGS, NEW SONGS, NEW ZEALAND SURVIVAL SONGS”

NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2024

Queenstown, Sherwood - Sunday 21 January

Auckland, Q Theatre - Wednesday 24 January

Wellington, Old St Pauls - Saturday 27 January

GENERAL ON-SALES BEGIN THURSDAY 23 NOVEMBER 10AM

TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT https://amandapalmer.net/events/

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