Eliza Niemi announces her new album, Progress Bakery, will drop on March 21st, 2024 via Tin Angel Records (Devin Sproule). Ahead of the album’s arrival, Niemi has shared lead single “Do U FM” alongside a self-directed video. “There’s a park where I grew up in Toronto that has this giant boulder in it. There’s this smooth platform on one side at the top of the rock that is cool to the touch and perfect to sit on. I used to climb up there and eat popsicles,” says Niemi of the song’s inspiration. “Years ago, the city underwent a big park revitalization project where they replaced all the wooden jungle gyms with metal and plastic ones. During this process they also moved the gigantic boulder to the other side of the park. I found this very funny and odd. It must have been so hard to do. I learned to ride a bike in that park. The feeling I get when I go there now reminds me of the smell of band class in elementary school–of spit and metal.”

Progress Bakery is the follow-up to the Toronto artist’s album Staying Mellow Blows–which was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. Progress Bakery was recorded with Louie Short, who co-produced the album along with Niemi, Jeremy Ray and Lukas Cheung (Mother Tongues). In addition to her own work as a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (primarily cello, as well as keys, bass, and guitar), Niemi enlisted help throughout Progress Bakery from her local community, including: drums by Evan Cartwright (Cola, Jennifer Castle, Andy Shauf); vocals by Dorothea Paas (U.S. Girls, Fucked Up); keys by Kenny Boothby (Little Kid); and percussion by Ed Squires (U.S. Girls), among others.

“A few years ago I sublet an apartment during a pretty heavy time in my life, and right down the street was a spot called Progress Bakery,” she explains. “I would walk by it every day on my way to work, often get a coffee, and chew on its name all morning. I thought it was quite funny and weirdly fitting for where I was at in my life. Their sign out front is half fallen off (it says ‘gress bakery’) and their espresso is amazing–it’s like jet fuel. It embodies many juxtapositions and overall has a really warm and heartening feel.

I wanted to make an album like the bakery’s broken sign–funny, strange, warm, melancholic and hopeful, that embodied this feeling of making steady yet non-linear progress. I chose to show my process more than in my previous releases–to zoom in on little moments in my thinking about and writing of the album. Sometimes you have to dissect something to be able to understand or move through it,” she explains. Every transition, known or unknown, carries the weight of new meaning. There is a trick you can use to tell if a dough is glutinous enough: stretch it out as thin as you can without breaking it, and hold it up to the light. If you can see through it, even if it renders the world murky and uncertain, leave it alone.”

Eliza Niemi
Progress Bakery
Tracklist
Tin Angel

1. Do U FM
2. Novelist Sad Face
3. Green Box
4. Dusty
5. The Linda Song
6. DM BF
7. I TrieD
8. Melodies Like Mark
9. Wildcat
10. How U Remind Me
11. Pocky
12. Bon Tempiii
13. PT Basement
14. Albuquerque II
15. Mary’s

Pre-order Progress Bakery by Eliza Niemi HERE