Ahead of her new album ‘A New Illusion’ released on April 5th and a London show next week, Rose Elinor Dougall drops another track from her forthcoming album.
‘Take What You Can Get’, is an unsettling cinematic pop song, arriving with the crash, boom bang of buzzing bass guitar and thunderous drums and fades to black with Rose’s voice fractured amongst the synths and creeping strings.
Explaining the song’s theme Rose says - “In Take What You Can Get’ I was trying to convey that hungry ardent energy that one can feel when falling for someone - hence the propulsive frenetic energy of the track. The ideas in the song can also be extended into a wider context of considering that grasping, opportunistic culture that seems all pervasive in modern day society. Filling the un-fillable void!”
Rose will showcase ‘Take What You Can Get’ and additional new material from ‘A New Illusion’ at a free gig at London’s Thousand Islands on March 26th. She’ll also be performing at Rough Trade East at 1.30pm on April 6th. Further dates are being lined up for May.
With a noticeable shift in dynamic, A New Illusion sees Dougall looking into the abyss – the millennial-burnout, Brexit-apocalypse, those impossible disappointments of growing up in the 21st century Britain – singing quietly with piano, with guitar, and with a gentle fuck-it attitude.
“I just wanted to sit at the piano and play, I wanted to return to something essential,” Dougall explains. “There’s something comforting and solid about that instinctive relationship with music, with playing and singing.”
Dougall has already unveiled two tracks: lead single First Sign – a song about - “vainly attemping to shake oneself loose from a situation” and ‘Make It With You’ – “in essence a simple love song, but set against the fear of an uncertain, turbulent future.”
A New Illusion is slower and more confident than her previous albums – the themes may be urgent but the sound is more relaxed. “I don’t feel the same angst about acknowledgement or approval. I decided to trust my instincts, to see if they connect with the world. I’ve been making music all my life, and this feels like a culmination of those experiences. I feel I’ve grown more fluent, more confident, more in charge that I have come closer to my natural sonic habitat.”
