Acclaimed singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist AK Patterson kicks off 2025 with her new single ‘Morticia’, out everywhere today. Hot off the release of her haunting debut single ‘I Don’t Know How To Die’, Patterson returns with her punchy new single which she describes as a “rock murder ballad”.
A distinctively more rocky sound than the haunting ‘I Don’t Know How To Die’, the track showcases Patterson’s versatility as a songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. The track was recorded in the studio with Charlie Andrew (alt-J, David Gilmour) in pitch black – “The subject matter of the song is quite dark and we really wanted to match that with the atmosphere of the studio to try and get the best vocal performance out of me. I got one of my favourite drummers to come in Adam betts, AKA Colossal Squid, and my mate Leon Itzler on bass but everything else you hear on the track is played by me. The coolest sound on the song for me is a concertina that I wanted to turn into a deep sub by attaching a contact mic to it. It had all these cool overtones on it which produced this kind of fore-boding droney fog horn. I love working with Charlie because he’s always very open to my crazy production ideas.”
Inspired by the likes of Soundgarden, Black Hole Sun, TOOL, and The Cranberries, lyrically, the track is based on a newspaper article about a gruesome historical murder, found by my friend and old bandmate Nat. Patterson says, “I wondered what it would be like writing a song from the victim’s point of view, who asks Morticia, the personification of death, to piece him back together in the afterlife. At the time I was spending a lot of time in London, walking around London Bridge and Borough Market, imagining what this man’s life was like having fallen in with the wrong crowd and getting swept up in the dark underbelly of the city.
“I first learned music within the Irish folk tradition, listening to a lot of Dolores O’Riordan and I love the way she mixed traditional singing styles with grunge music. I hope people can hear my love of that kind of music in the song. It’s definitely the heaviest track I’ve put out so far and is a direction I’d love to explore more of.”
