Winter (Samira Winter) announces her new album What Kind of Blue Are You? due out October 14 on cult indie label Bar/None Records (Yo La Tengo, Ivy). Along with the news, Winter has shared lead single ‘atonement’, a rhythm centric banger buoyed by a tightly wound breakbeat and soaring chorus. The track features Hatchie’s Harriette Pilbeam & Joe Agius.
On the single, Winter says “Every time I hear this song a new version of the story plays out in my head – an escape, a mystery, a forbidden love. By the time it reaches full climax there is a big reveal – the secret is out, the we discover who committed the crime, the two lovers find each other.”
On the collaboration, Pilbeam says the track “really wrote itself and was a lot of fun to make.” Agius adds, “The concept for the video immediately came to mind when working on the song together. The dark and talkative verses contrasting with the bubbly hopeful choruses really conveyed the kinda energy I wanted to translate”
Over the course of the pandemic, Samira decamped to Studio 22 in L.A. with producer Joo Joo Ashworth (Automatic, Dummy, SASAMI) where the pair spent the many months of harsh uncertainty sharpening her songs into a fine point. “I felt like I was making music in a dark cave with an old friend and no one else existed,” Samira says of the process. Within that place of separation from the outside world, she was able to venture into the core of Winter, imbuing every musical choice with a confident intentionality, and newfound vulnerability.
What Kind of Blue Are You?, Winter’s second release with Bar/None Records, is an emotional excavation of Samira’s purest self. Musically, the LP’s 10 songs reconnect with the earliest incarnation of Winter, once again painting with brushstrokes of distorted guitar, but using them to fuel a wiser, more mature form of sonic liberation. Whereas 2020’s Endless Space (Between You and I) was steeped in fairytale surrealism and springlike grace, her latest offering is crystalline and spartan, songs stripped to their inner blue core, Winter’s smoldering shadow self.
What Kind Of Blue Are You?:
- wish I knew
- atonement (feat. Hatchie)
- good (feat. SASAMI)
- sunday
- crimson enclosure
- write it out
- lose you
- fool
- mr. on my mind
- kind of blue
