Photo Credit: Kimberly Ha
Primal, expansive, sexy and wrenchingly tender-hearted, critically acclaimed songwriter and performer THAO has announced her first album in six years. Titled quite appropriately Show Me – due out October 30 via Kill Rock Stars – the new collection is a deeply personal exploration of her journey toward full embodiment; a flaying of flesh and old burden to reveal the rapturously beating heart therein. It is a suite of lush, lovingly crafted and powerfully voiced songs that act as portals into THAO’s kaleidoscopic inner life. Show Me was self-produced alongside Nate Brenner (also a co-writer) and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards and features special guests: Tune-Yards, The Linda Lindas, Neko Case and Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas).
Lead single “Sick of the Times” is an art-rock protest anthem made for community activation and organizing. It is a sure fire anthem of and for these times and arrives alongside a powerful official video. Featuring vocals from powerhouse punks The Linda Lindas and close friend and collaborator Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards (who are also featured in the video), the song thrums and seethes and soothes, the infectious synth drum hook leading us into punk rock battle, the vocals uplifting and defiant. “I wanted it to be an anthem that will be used at political rallies, grass roots organizing and mutual aid events, anything that can help us emotionally prepare to activate and to stay politically engaged at all levels, but especially at the local level,” says Nguyen. “We need to keep each other buoyant, to remind ourselves we’ve got the numbers and the imperative.” Putting action to her ideas, THAO has teamed up once again with Working Families Power to donate $1 per ticket for her newly announced west coast dates.
Watch / Share “Sick of the Times” video
Sometimes life starts educating you before you are ready to receive the lesson. In the midst of her multidisciplinary artistic forays, THAO’s personal life underwent a reckoning: divorce, the upending of a home. “I learned that the point of life is not to emerge unscathed, and that I don't want to operate as I always have — masking fear as indifference,” she says. “This album is a real-time record-keeping of my life evolving into a different relationship with love and desire over the last few years. For example, I came out publicly years ago but I’ve never really written a song about sex or queer identity. So, that’s in there,” she winks. “Some songs are snapshots of moments I've never felt before. Some are ruminations of what I need to keep, what I want to shear, what I want to move toward.” In the shearing spirit, out went her long-time band name — Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. Show Me is a record of that journey.
The beloved songwriter has been endlessly busy outside the realm of record making since her last lauded album Temple: guest-hosting the iconic Song Exploder podcast, hosting the PBS TV show Southern Storytellers, developing a musical, film scoring and film starring (with collaborator/ Macarthur Fellow artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, currently on exhibit in contemporary art institutions), gracing the cover of New York Times’s T Magazine, performing on Fred Armisen’s 2018 Netflix special Standup for Drummers and working on her first book for renowned publisher Graywolf Press. But THAO is a stage commanding recording artist first and foremost, and she is thrilled to be back in our ears and live in our sights.
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