× Joana Serrat to play Ramblin' Roots Festival and a string of shows in Sweden

Joana Serrat to play Ramblin' Roots Festival and a string of shows in Sweden

27-09-2021

Catalan singer-songwriter Joana Serrat returns with new album ‘Hardcore From The Heart’.  Her fifth album and the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed ‘Dripping Springs’ (“…like Mazzy Star guesting on an early Neil Young demo,” Mojo). For the recording, Serrat travelled from her home in Vic, a small city near Barcelona, to Redwood Studio in Denton, Texas, where she teamed up with engineer and producer Ted Young (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo).

Hardcore From The Heart‘ is an album steeped in contradictions. Joana Serrat writes beautifully fragile and diaphanous songs then surrounds them in arrangements of muscular force and intensity. In fact the effect is a little like the arrangements Daniel Lanois built around Emmylou Harris’ voice on ‘Wrecking Ball‘. But Serrat sounds nothing like Harris. Serrat’s voice is both deep and authoritative and ethereal at the same time: equal parts Tanita Tikaram (and there’s a comparator I haven’t thought about for many years) and Margo Timmins.

The whole concept is beautifully demonstrated in the atmospheric opening track ‘Easy’ which swells and ebbs creating a soundscape that consumes the listener. The same ideas are used throughout, but to different effects. First single, ‘Pictures’, turns up the jangling guitar lines, but that swirling soundscape is still there providing a secure base for the up-tempo melody.

By the end of the month Joana Serrat will be traveling to Sweden for a string of shows:

29/09: Kristianstad, SWE - Kulturkvarteret
30/09: Hultsfred, SWE - Hotel Hulingen
01/10: Malmö, SWE - Folk å Rock
02/10: Hagebyhöga, SWE - Vadstena Brukshundklubb
04/10: Stockholm, SWE - Twang
05/10: Uppsala, SWE - Katalin
23/10: Utrecht, NL - Ramblin Roots Festival

 

 

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