The Northern Irish musician graduates from lonesome singer-songwriter to bold art-pop auteur; her growing confidence translates to emotionally probing songs of startling candor.”– Pitchfork, 7.3
“Soak’s songs are a product of an unsure age of casual relationships and employment, of economic and ecological crises. But rather than rattling towards the depths of existential despair, Grim Town is an upbeat voyage, finding unlikely optimism settles in as reassuring folk-pop.” – The Big Issue
“Signalling an audible shift from indie folk to dreamy pop, SOAK’s much-anticipated upcoming record ‘Grim Town’ is the stunning culmination of a lengthy period of unintentional reinvention.” –Best Before
“The Derry-based singer songwriter exhibits increasing versatility on this accomplished sophomore release.”– The Line Of Best Fit
“It’s SOAK sense of boldness on Grim Town that feels like major step on her creative odyssey. Where she ends up is to be confirmed, but the possibilities are limitless.”– The Irish Times, ★★★★
SOAK has today released her anticipated second album Grim Town, via Rough Trade Records/Remote Control.
SOAK’s hugely-accomplished second album Grim Town, which follows the success of Bridie’s multi-prize-winning 2015 debut album Before We Forgot How To Dream. Its central premise, says the still-just-22-year-old, is “a dystopia that I’ve created in my brain: me on the inside, processed into a pretend location. The way I could wrap my head around a lot of what I was going through was to make it feel like something quite physical and real. Once I had the idea of the album being an actual location, exploring the dynamics of this town and what it would look or sound like felt like the right way to give my mental state a personality.” So if Before We Forgot How To Dream was conceived as a time-capsule of innocence, vividly capturing those moments in adolescence when anything felt possible, Grim Town perhaps examines the reality of what happens next, after you enter adulthood (but actually feel more in crisis than ever), and the world around you isn’t what was promised to you or your generation.
A record about getting lost that you can, also, truly get lost in,Grim Town sees Bridie tackling everything from long-distance love, depression, divorce and social anxiety to the changing modern landscape (sexually, politically, emotionally) with unflinching honesty. An acceptance of the jumble of emotions that makes you ‘you’ emerges as the ultimate message of the album, with its suitably placeless universe in which everybody’s personal Grim Town looks different, but everybody’s matters.
