Canada-born, London-based singer/songwriter Tess Parks is announcing her third solo album, Pomegranate, and sharing the lead single and video ‘Koalas’. Out October 25 via Fuzz Club. Pomegranate is the follow-up to her long-awaited solo return with And Those Who Were Seen Dancing, which arrived in 2022 to critical acclaim following a string of collaborative albums with Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe.
Written and recorded between London, Toronto and Los Angeles, Pomegranate finds Parks teaming up with long-term bandmember and close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who assumes production duties here and co-mixed the album alongside Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon (The Smile, Gaz Coombes, Arcade Fire). New single ‘Koalas’ is a piece of beautifully hazy, slow-burning psych-folk with Parks’ smoky vocals floating over feathery acoustic guitar and piano, and some spellbinding whistling courtesy of Molly Lewis.
On the new single, Parks says: “In November 2020, Ruari was in London and I was in Toronto and he sent me the music for ‘Koalas’. At this point, we hadn’t seen each other in over a year. It would be another year before we saw each other again. I was suffering from severe PTSD at this point in my life, and to be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the song properly until early February. When I finally did – it was one of those moments when you hear a song and you know it’s going to be one of your favourite, most cherished songs for your whole life. It’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.”
She adds: “Ruari sending me this song instigated the making of this album – a daily back and forth correspondence where he would send me music and I would sing some words over it and then he would sing other ideas back to me. It was a true lifeline at what felt like the end of the world. I don’t know who I would be without these songs, this song particularly, and waking up everyday looking forward to what he was going to send me next.”
Pomegranate:
- Bagpipe Blues
- California’s Dreaming
- Koalas
- Lemon Poppy
- Charlie Potato
- Crown Shy
- Running Home To Sing
- Sunnyside
- Surround
