“Heaven” By Grace Cummings

Australian singer/songwriter and producer Grace Cummings’ forthcoming, self-produced sophomore album. Storm Queen will be released on January 14th on ATO Records, and follows Cummings’ understated debut album Refuge Cove, which was released in 2019 via King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s Flightless Records. Cummings has played shows with Weyes Blood, Evan Dando, J Mascis and more.

Along with the announcement, Cummings has shared the album’s lead-single “Heaven.” “The chorus to ‘Heaven’ has the words ‘Ave Maria’ in it, but not because I’m religious in any way,” Cummings explains. “To me talking about God or Mother Mary is a way of labeling something beautiful that I don’t understand, something that’s not quite a part of the world we live in.”

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 favorites; 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 theater, 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—“If anyone wants me to play Hamlet, I’ll do it”—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.

Grace Cummings
Storm Queen
Tracklisting
ATO Records

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

Pre-order Grace by Grace Cummings HERE

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