Altsounds - HOPE SANDOVAL RELEASE NEW SINGLE

‘Blanchard’ is the gorgeous first single to be taken from Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions forthcoming album ‘Through The Devil Softly’. It’s a typical offering from the former Mazzy Star front woman and My Bloody Valentine guitarist Colm Ó Cíosóig – a dreamy delicate song that soothes the senses and transports the listener to a better place where all seems well with the world. Incorporating bleak folk, dreamy psychedelia and gothic country that has become Hope’s trademark, it’s accompanied by typically obscure lyrics… “I’m merely standing on holes in the ground. If I fall, well they’ll never know I’m found,” she comments. Later she muses, “I play death in the space of my life. That’s how I feel, and I never think it twice,” and you’re left to wonder if she’s ruminating on her own taciturn nature. As with the album’s title, the words are not there to be explained. They’re to be felt and interpreted. The mystery is magnetic.

This is the first new material from the duo since the release of the critically acclaimed ‘Bavarian Fruit Bread’ album eight years ago, but Colm and Hope aren’t ones to adhere to traditional timetables and conventions. “Time is vibrations for us,” he says. In the meantime, however, neither artist has been creatively idle. Hope has collaborated with Devendra Banhart, Air, Bert Jansch, Death In Vegas, and is due to appear on Massive Attack’s forthcoming album. And a new Mazzy Star record is on the horizon, although there is currently no date for its release. Meanwhile, 2009 saw the reunion of My Bloody Valentine for a select group of live shows, which kicked off with an incendiary performance at this year’s Coachella Festival.

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions will perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 8th November 2009.