INDIGO SPARKE
ANNOUNCES DEBUT ALBUM ECHO
CO-PRODUCED BY ADRIANNE LENKER
LISTEN TO LEAD SINGLE "BABY"
ECHO OUT JANUARY 29, 2021
Photo Credit: Adrianne Lenker
"I had the privilege and pleasure of getting to help Indigo put these recordings together back in April and throughout 2019. These songs became near and dear to me, and it was beautiful to help build the billowy landscapes within them. Indigo's writing and voice are ethereal and angelic and guide me through internal canyons and plains. I'm deeply grateful to have been part of this and to have gotten to play and sing along side Indigo, and to have been able to eternalize a very special space and time with her, which I will always cherish."
-Adrianne Lenker
"With these songs and her filament voice, Indigo brings us in to a private place and lights a fire there."
-Feist
"Indigo Sparke balance[s] heavy, reverb-drenched verses with moments of airy and acoustic whispers. This Australian artist tackles themes of vulnerability and femininity with an eye on life through a different lens."
-NPR, All Songs Considered
Australian artist Indigo Sparke has announced her debut album, Echo, with its lead single "Baby." Gorilla vs Bear , who premiered the track today, is calling it "achingly beautiful and heart-wrenching" saying it "feels impossibly intimate and vast at once, like a cherished secret that, once shared, becomes universal truth. The song gently blooms from fragile whisper into a transcendent, celestial beacon thanks to Sparke's poignant lyrics and exquisite voice."
The song features backing vocals and harmonies by the album's co-producer Adrianne Lenker, synth by Big Thief's James Krivchenia and glockenspiel by Nick Hakim.
Of the song, Sparke says "I think love is quite sadly beautiful and haunting, to be at the mercy of the tides of love, to let it turn you inside out and distill you into something magnificent or strip you bare. I think this song came from dreams and endless love letters sent back and forth across oceans in the forms of songs. So much hope and fear and a burning star shining with just that one persons image... and the lullaby, there is only love. Sometimes it feels like you are canoeing in the river in the sky searching for this person who truly sees you and sometimes it comes along in the most unexpected ways. It can feel so achy. The longing."
Echo, which was co-produced by Sparke, Lenker and Andrew Sarlo, is a deep and intimate ode to death, decay and the restless feeling of wanting to belong to something greater. The album is available for pre-order now and due January 29th.
LISTEN TO "BABY"
How do you reconcile loving someone when everything is relentlessly changing, dying, and decaying? It is devastating to love and be loved, because the perfect is both impermanent and eternal. For eons and mere moments, we exist with lovers like we exist in deserts, where the landscape stretches on and on. You can't possibly hold it all. These are the questions that permeate the rooms, corridors and wider landscapes of Indigo Sparke's debut record, Echo. Sifting through deep and intimate relationships, her work is a constellation of desire, dreams, memories and melancholia. Infused with heartbreak and hope, her songs are sombre, yet reflective, positioning herself like a stone being tumbled in tides of time.
Listening to Echo, it is clear Indigo has submerged herself even further into an abyss of ambiguous grief, dismantling the glass house of hope, and resurfacing with a fragile, yet fearless debut record. It was on a tour in Australia supporting Big Thief that Indigo met Adrianne Lenker. The two formed a transcendental connection and over the next two years, explored vast deserts and heaving cities across the world, eventually ending up in an old castle nestled in the hills of Northern Italy. The record was recorded between LA, Italy and New York, co-produced by Indigo, Adrianne, and Andrew Sarlo. Sarlo engineered the first session in LA. It was at the castle that Indigo met Shahzad Ismaily (musician and multi-instrumentalist) who, upon learning Indigo wrote poetry, asked her late one night to work on a song with him. What became of that session is "Dog Bark Echo." Back in New York, at Shahzad's studio (Figure 8), the record was completed. The final session there was engineered and eventually mixed by Phil Weinrobe (producer/engineer of Leonard Cohen, Damien Rice, Adrianne Lenker, etc).
Laced with sparse filmic piano, seraphic harmonies and reverb-drenched vocals and guitar, this record was born in the desert, where silence forces you to dissect yourself. Indigo drew out her magnifying glass to look at the dust and guts and glitter of existence. It is clear Indigo has lived and woven her many lives into these songs, telling us, "I feel and have often felt a million different women ramble and reconfigure the corners of my mind and soul. I think in my life, I have ricocheted off so many different walls within myself. It's an endless search to understand the mysteries of life and love and history. As soon as you think you've got it, it's gone. Sometimes I feel so thin. Sometimes I feel so robust. I think that comes through the music."
The record plays like a lullaby. It is soft with gentle nods to the sounds of everyday life, yet dripping with sensuality.
Album Art by Adrianne Lenker
INDIGO SPARKE
ECHO
JANUARY 29, 2021
1. Colourblind
2. Undone
3. Bad Dreams
4. Carnival
5. Dog Bark Echo
6. Golden Age
7. Wolf
8. Baby
9. Everything Everything
indigosparke.bandcamp.com | Instagram @indigosparke
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