Bridie Monds-Watson’s first album since 2022 is out on Friday December 4th, with Irish dates to follow in February.
SOAK has announced a new album, decembers, and a run of Irish headline shows for next year.
The Derry artist’s fourth album arrives on Friday December 4th via Rough Trade. The title track is out now, following June’s single ‘death valley fridge magnet’, their first new solo material in over four years. It follows 2022’s If I Never Know You Like This Again, 2019’s Grim Town and their Mercury-nominated 2015 debut Before We Forgot How to Dream.
The Irish tour, billed as “Decembers on Tour”, follows a summer of intimate Irish shows in bookshops, pubs and record shops, where the new songs were first previewed. The February dates move into proper venues:
- Wednesday February 17th, Empire, Belfast
- Thursday February 18th, Button Factory, Dublin
- Friday February 19th, Dolan’s, Limerick
- Saturday February 20th, St Luke’s, Cork
Tickets go on sale on Friday October 2nd at 10am via Singular Artists and Ticketmaster, plus fees. Prices range – £18, €20, €22 and €22.50 plus fees.
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Describing the record, SOAK points to a passage from Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again, and says they spent a long time trying to disprove the idea that you can’t return to the past. Eventually they realised that was no way to live. “In a way, I think decembers is about forgiveness,” they say.
“When I try to describe the album. I always go back to a quote from Thomas Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go Home Again where he says ‘You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love… back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.’ I think for a long time I wanted to disprove that concept, I don’t know why I was so determined – maybe the familiarity of before felt safe. In the end I realised that was no way to live and had to learn how to lean into the rest of my life. In a way, I think decembers is about forgiveness.”
The album travels from the road in America to the frosty paths of Dublin at night, a search for a meteor in Portugal, and a return home to Derry.
The tracklist for decembers:
- ‘decembers’
- ‘death valley fridge magnet’
- ‘speed’
- ‘woodstock’
- ‘minus 3’
- ‘subaru’
- ‘backroads’
- ‘transmitter park’
- ‘closing down’
SOAK also plays the UK and Europe in February, with US dates in October supporting The Barr Brothers, including New York’s Bowery Ballroom.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
