A lot has happened since the release of Wax Idols’ 2013 album, Discipline + Desire. The band’s singer-songwriter, Hether Fortune, supported the album as best she could, spent time in 2014 as a touring player in White Lung, went through a heartbreaking divorce, and then sat down to make American Tragic – the band’s third album and first for Collect Records.

“Divorce is a part of this record, yes, but this is not an entirely sad album,” Fortune explains. “The whole spectrum of grief is represented here — shock, pain, anger, loneliness, and then finding a way to work through all of that and not only survive, but thrive. That’s what I was going through. I was kind of trying to save myself.”

“With Discipline, I explored lots of texture and layering while trying to push my own idea of what a pop song could be,” she says. “But on this record, the arrangements are deliberately more minimal so that the songs themselves can really shine. I’m not hiding anything here.”

As a songwriter and true multi-instrumentalist, Fortune wrote and recorded everything but the drums on American Tragic. Co-produced by Fortune and Monte Vallier (Weekend, Mark Eitzel, The Soft Moon, Vaniish), the only other player on this record is drummer Rachel Travers.

“I don’t want to sell those collaborators short,” Fortune insists. “Rachel is a much better drummer than me, so I leaned on her to flesh out these songs after they’d been demoed. And Monte does a lot on the production side to help me actualize the noise in my head. But at this point in my career, I’m really tired of people not knowing that I do everything. Well, pretty much everything.”

‘American Tragic’ Tracklist:

1. A Violent Transgression
2. Lonely You
3. I’m Not Going
4. Deborah
5. Goodbye Baby
6. Glisten
7. Severely Yours
8. At Any Moment
9. Seraph

Upcoming Wax Idols Tour Dates:

July 31 – Los Angeles, CA. – Teragram Ballroom. (w/ Lydia Lunch)
August 14 – Santa Ana, CA – Berserktown II (w/ White Lung, Thee Oh Sees + more)
August 15 – Los Angeles, CA. – Origami Vinyl In-Store.
August 28 – Oakland, CA.- Life Changing Ministries. (w/ VANIISH)