Dream Wife are back, announcing details their explosive second album, So When You Gonna…, released on the 3rd of July 2020 via Lucky Number.
Dealing with topics such as abortion, miscarriage, and gender equality, and produced entirely by a non-male team of producer and mixer Marta Salogni (Björk, Holly Herndon, FKA Twigs), engineer Grace Banks (David Wrench, Marika Hackman) and mastering engineer Heba Kadry (Princess Nokia, Alex G, Beach House). While it touches on important themes, there’s also an immediacy, a ‘now or never’ excitement that exists right at the core of this record, that encourages you to stop waiting and start doing. The album title is a play on that central idea. “It’s an invitation, a challenge, a call to action,” says Mjöll.
To celebrate the album announcement, Dream Wife share the album’s bright lead single ‘Sports!’ Having played almost 200 shows across 2018, the band forgot how to sit still, and turned to playing sports together while writing the new album. ‘Sports!’ an ode to those moments in which they needed to expel some post-tour energy. It’s an absurd, playful, moreish track, full of colourful guitar flourishes and winking vocal asides. The band self-directed and self-produced the music video as well, and you can read more about it below. Check out the song and music video below:
They say: “Sports!’ sits on multiple levels; of satire and celebration, of nonsense and commonsense, of the body and the mind, of IRL and digital. The video simultaneously plays with and celebrates ‘sports’ through multiple levels of reality and non-reality; exploring the nonsense of sports, toying with the seriousness of competition and the rigidity of rules while also asserting how important it is to be in your body, the joy of being in a team, the purpose in doing something for the sake of doing it, the endorphins and the sweat.
Playing sports is great if that’s for you but there are so many other ways to be physical, to be with your body. For us, more often than not, it’s the rock show. Rock n roll is an extreme sport and we’re a team.”
Dream Wife – Alice Go, Bella Podpadec and Rakel Mjöll – released their awesome self-titled debut in 2018, earning support slots with the likes of Garbage, Sleigh Bells and The Kills, sold-out international headline shows, secured syncs in shows like Orange is The New Black.
With a gender divide in music production currently estimated at around ninety-five percent male to five percent female, the band have– as they say in “Sports!” –“put their money where their mouth is”. It’s not just about working with a community of people they respect, it’s about encouraging the next generation of creatives, too. Which is why So When You Gonna… is also the name of Dream Wife’s new podcast series.
“It was amazing to work with this community of womxn on this album who are supporting each other in an industry that is so male-dominated. It was a way of us practicing what we preach. It felt like an honour to be able to deliver this baby with these three amazing midwives,” says Go. Podpadec adds, “What would you call the opposite of gate-keeping? Facilitator? Enabler? It’s all about opening the gates.”
Track-list:
1. Sports!
2. Hasta La Vista
3. Homesick
4. Validation
5. Temporary
6. U Do U
7. RH RN
8. Old Flame
9. So When You Gonna…
10. Hold On Me
11. After The Rain
Tour dates:
26 July – Pikehall, UK: Y Not Festival
24 July – Topcliffe, UK: Deer Shed Festival
06 June – Milton Keynes, UK: Marshall
05 June – London, UK: Wide Awake
13 May – Dublin, Ireland: Eastbound @ Whelan’s
03 May – Newcastle, UK: Hit The North13th
03 May – Glasgow, UK: Stag & Dagger
02 May – Edinburgh, UK: Stag & Dagger
01 May – Liverpool, UK: Sound City
25 Apr – Reading, UK: Are You Listening
23 Apr – Cologne, Germany: Pop Festival
03 Apr – Paris, France: Louis Vuitton Museum
28 Mar – Bristol, UK: Ritual Union
Photo credit: Sarah Piantadosi
