Soak shares “Valentine Shmalentine”

SOAK AKA: Bridie Monds-Watson, has released “Valentine Shmalentine.” The track is off her LP Grim Town, available on April 26th via Rough Trade Records
Soak "Valentine Shmalentine"

Irish, singer/songwriter SOAK AKA: Bridie Monds-Watson, has released her new single “Valentine Shmalentine.” The track is off her new album Grim Town, available on April 26th via Rough Trade Records.

The central premise of Grim Town, says SOAK, is “a dystopia that I’ve created in my brain: me on the inside, processed into a pretend location. The way I could wrap my head around a lot of what I was going through was to make it feel like something quite physical and real. Once I had the idea of the album being an actual location, exploring the dynamics of this town and what it would look or sound like felt like the right way to give my mental state a personality.” So if Before We Forgot How To Dream was conceived as a time-capsule of innocence, vividly capturing those moments in adolescence when anything felt possible, Grim Town perhaps examines the reality of what happens next, after you enter adulthood (but actually feel more in crisis than ever), and the world around you isn’t what was promised to you or your generation.

A record about getting lost that you can, also, truly get lost in, Grim Town sees Bridie tackling everything from long-distance love, depression, divorce and social anxiety to the changing modern landscape (sexually, politically, emotionally) with unflinching honesty. An acceptance of the jumble of emotions that makes you ‘you’ emerges as the ultimate message of the album, with its suitably placeless universe in which everybody’s personal Grim Town looks different, but everybody’s matters.

SOAK 2019
Tour Dates:

05/06 – Kendal, UK @ Kendal Library
05/10 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall
05/11 – Leeds, UK @ The Wardrobe
05/12 – Glasgow, UK @ King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
05/14 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
05/15 – Oxford, UK @ O2 Academy Oxford
05/16 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
05/17 – London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
05/19 – Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique – Rotonde
05/20 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Bitterzoet
05/22 – Hamburg, Germany @ Prinzebar
05/23 – Berlin, Germany @ Privatclub
05/24 – Cologne, Germany @ Artheater
05/28 – Cork, IE @ Live at St Lukes
05/29 – Limerick, IE @ Dolans
05/30 – Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
05/31 – Derry, UK @ The Glassworks

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