Danish songwriter and frontman of indie-rock band Yung, Mikkel Holm Silkjær aka Holm, has shared new single ‘K’s Choice’, taken from his debut solo album ‘Why Don’t You Dance’, due 28th January via PNKSLM Recordings. The track follows on from previous singles ‘Erase & Repeat’, ‘Back Home’ and ‘Intelligent Moves’.

Silkjær says his latest track is about “an individual who lives their life without a care and without addressing the needs of the people surrounding them. It is a song about seeing yourself in a person you encounter and not liking what you’re confronted with, and then taking that sensation and turning it into something positive.” He continues; “K’s choice came about at a time where a lot of things around me were changing. I struggled with the change that confronted me, and to me it seemed there were no reasoning behind what was happening. When you see people (or life) in a different light it might seem like they have morphed into something different, when in fact it is yourself who’s changed. The music I wrote started to sound different and it felt like something I didn’t feel fully acquainted with. K’s Choice is one of the songs I wrote in this period, and for a long time I really didn’t like the song. It felt too different from what I usually wrote. As time has passed I’ve learned to really appreciate this song, and I’m quite proud of it now. The lyrics very much reflect the bewildering thoughts I had when I wrote the song.”

Holm
Why Don’t You Dance
Tracklist
PNKSLM Recordings

1. Intelligent Moves
2. Valley of Dreams
3. The Rope
4. K’s Choice
5. Intermezzo
6. Like a Dog
7. Descending
8. Back Home
9. Erase & Repeat
10. Why Don’t You Dance?

After three years of on-off writing and nearly six months of recording, Silkjær was almost done with his debut solo record when he finally figured out what it at all meant.

It was a powerful lightbulb moment for him both creatively and personally, and one that came with a little help from Raymond Carver.

Arriving home late from the studio, Silkjær picked up the legendary writer’s short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and read Why Don’t You Dance? for the first time: a highly enigmatic tale of a man apparently selling off his life’s possessions in his front yard. It concludes with a young woman, who bought some of his belongings, still trying – and ultimately failing – to figure out what the man’s story was. “There was more to it,” says Carver in the penultimate sentence.

There was more, too, to the songs Silkjær had been working on for his solo project, Holm; Carver’s story helped to unlock the deeper truth to them. “‘I’d been reflecting on the record, and thinking a lot about the lyrics,” Silkjær recalls. “And reading that really resonated with me. It made me realise I’d been in a dark place for a long time, and that I hadn’t really been vocal about not feeling well, but it was there in the songs. There was this overwhelming sense of realising things weren’t going the way I wanted. As soon as I read the story, I wrote the last song for the album, which is about the catch-22 of wanting to get better, but worrying I wouldn’t keep producing good work if I did. We recorded it the next morning, and I knew Why Don’t You Dance had to be the title of the album.”

Order Why Don’t You Dance by Holm HERE