SOAK announces “decembers”, an album born from silence
Bridie Monds-Watson announces SOAK’s fourth album, a nine-song record born from a period of enforced silence.
SOAK has announced decembers, a fourth studio album set for release on December 4 through Rough Trade Records.
Bridie Monds-Watson’s project returns four years after If I Never Know You Like This Again with a record whose story begins, quite literally, with the absence of sound.
During a period in which an autoimmune illness prevented Monds-Watson from singing, everything was forced to stop. That silence became the starting point for decembers: nine songs exploring movement, disorientation, the places we return to and the difficult acceptance that some things cannot be recovered exactly as they once were.
The album also moves geographically. Roads across America, frost-covered nighttime walks through Dublin, a search for a meteor in Portugal and a return home to Derry all form part of its landscape.
Its title track, “decembers”, serves as the first preview.
The record follows standalone single “death valley fridge magnet” and SOAK’s collaboration with Fred again.. on “just stand there”. It becomes the fourth chapter in a catalogue that began with Mercury Prize-nominated Before We Forgot How to Dream, followed by Grim Town and If I Never Know You Like This Again.
One idea appears to sit at the centre of decembers: getting lost can also mean getting free.
SOAK has taken a period of enforced silence and turned it into exactly that — a new place from which to begin.