16 August 2024 - 0 Comments

Hailing from Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai / Lower Hutt, fellow creator Albert River has worked on bank woe for the past six years. “The whole process became as if I was tinkering with feeling,” he says about bank woe’s development, “the songs wanted everything, oscillation and reemergence.” Albert River’s bank woe is due out on local label Home Alone on 6 September, 2024. Bank woe’s release also unveils an exquisite superlunary first single send my love, which Albert describes as “A dark sermon and an ode to loss and true love.”

Pre-order bank woe Here

Listen to send my love Here

With references to Macbeth, and owing a debt to a canon of wordsmiths including Joni Mitchell for the roses and others who have retreated away from the world - the self-produced record is a place of solace and poetry for its listeners. The seven songs, self-described as “neon like ghosty hymns” are drawn around Albert’s gossamer vocals which hover between layers of piano, finger-picked guitar, harmonium and a flute made from an ancient piece of kauri wood.

On bank woe he says “there is a ghostly energy in these songs, bank woe has many meanings interweaving, it is very much exploring life and death…about being a poor artist”.

Albert River has been channeling sound since his first record at age 16, ever since he has learnt many instruments, refining the inner alchemy of his expression. Previously releasing music as A.U.R.A, with his 2019 release Secret Intelligent Light (released via LA label Cosmic Dreamer A.U.R.A worked with producer Ben Lemi (Dawn Diver, French for Rabbits, Trinity Roots and Vera Ellen) to carefully craft a sonic landscape that sought to gain a personal understanding of existence. After opening for Bright Eyes followed by a nationwide tour with Reb Fountain and Voom performing with his sister Vera Ellen (whose Taite Winning album Ideal Home Noise he made deep contributions to) Albert River returns to bring us bank woe.

The making of his new album bank woe took 6 years of a very slow and deliberate process, in many ways, a ceremony, every sound and the mix all alone, He says “I had a dream that died, perhaps us artists understand that sorrow, but then somehow, the dreams dream begins stirring , a very interesting pain artistically’. Exploring concepts of death and life, bank woe is his first album since 2019’s Secret Intelligent Light and his first on Wellington / Te Whanganui-a-Tara label Home Alone.

Albert River has always followed his own distinctive path, but music is a family pursuit. His mother had a band with her brother in the late 70’s called The Climb. His sister Tali in hardcore band Dial, Human Resource and Another F****** Problem and his sister Vera Ellen.

His latest offering bank woe as Albert River feels like both a departure and a return to his earlier raw work, lo-fi and stripped back, but retaining the attention to detail in production of his later work.

Photo Credit: Samuel Austin

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