Simone White debuts sidewinding new single and new LP Silver Silver out on Honest Jon’s this May
LISTEN: What The Devil Brings
WATCH: In The Water Where The City Ends
This new Fol Chen-produced album features a more expansive, textured direction with guest spots from Andrew Bird, Thao, and Victoria WIlliams was released in May on Honest Jon’s Records
Working with Samuel Bing and Julian Wass of Fol Chen, White has delivered her most affecting, ambitious album yet. In contrast to her folk/country-tinged 2007 debut, I Am The Man, and 2009’s quiet offering, Yakiimo, Silver Silver has White’s soft voice framed by complex arrangements: There are pulsing, speaker-rattling bass tones, delicately layered vocal harmonies, and exquisitely lush washes of sound. It is also the singer’s most personal record to date: “A lot of stuff happened during the production. Two deaths, a breakup, fell in love.”
The record features guest spots from Andrew Bird, Thao, and Victoria Williams (all musician friends White met through touring), and for the first time mixes songs with instrumental segues and textures—including an unrecognisably manipulated field recording of neighbourhood street sounds (listen hard and you might hear an ice cream truck). “There’s space throughout, and time away from the words. It’s what I like to hear in music now, less words, and a little time to consider what you’re listening to.”