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微微苦澀的情歌包覆在柔軟夢幻的吉他中,Bloomsday的主唱Iris James Garrison讓你想起樂團Big Thief的風格,她擅長寫微妙的歌詞隱喻,透過聯想令人回味的物品或珍貴的回憶,帶出個人色彩,也與Hovvdy、Lomelda、Slow Pulp等多個音樂人關係緊密,如果喜歡上述的獨立民謠,Bloomsday也必定會在你的口袋名單中。
The way Bloomsday Iris James Garrison writes songs feels like somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they are an ode to things that are good no matter how small; they sometimes feel like the ghost of a Mary Oliver poem. Bloomsday new record, Heart of the Artichoke, is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.
Like earlier Bloomsday songs, the work here is threaded with warmth; its simmering, crisp and deeply human, an encapsulation of the present moment. Recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at duo Babehoven studio and co-produced by Babehoven Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp. The record was built out with a wide-ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley. It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self.
Collaboration is an integral part of Bloomsday musical process. Garrison is malleable in the studio, their songwriting generous and spacious. But in listening to the record, there a sense that Garrison leaves room for the players, for the listener; for songs to find the shapes theye meant to take. Garrison role as maestro is crucial, singular – its a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what known – or pushing past that, into unknown.
Garrison is a true-blue songwriter and their structured, earworm compositions have the tendency to get stuck in your head, sometimes reminiscent of the big alternative radio hits of the mid 90s, a la Joan Osborne. “Dollar Slice” is the sweeping centerpoint of the record – Garrison cavernous crescendoing vocals, the chaotic tapestry of New York the backdrop, a sort-of 2024-update of “One of Us.” “Im not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power – whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. Thats kind of godly to me.”
“The ghosts of the past still come up and haunt me,” Garrison says, “but I sit in what I have and see it. All of these songs are about loved ones, about personal struggles with getting out of my head and being present.” Heart of the Artichoke was written from a healed, matured place – written in a moment of safety from chaos. Its a prayer for the present, an appreciation of tenderness and what happens once we give ourselves the space to really see, and really feel – becoming free and whole – an ode to the way healing allows us to bloom.
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