Grammy-Award winning singer Kimbra will release a new album, entitled The Golden Echo, on August 19 via Warner Bros. Records.
The album is available for pre-order on all participating retailers today. Those who pre-order will receive three instant downloads of the album tracks “Love In High Places,” “90s Music,” and “Nothing But You.” The official video for “90s Music,” directed by Justin Francis (Alicia Keys, The Roots, Gwen Stefani) is already available and can be watched below:
The ultimate modern pop record, The Golden Echo is ambitious, sophisticated, and complex, just like its creator. The New Zealand-born singer and songwriter wrote the songs in her bedroom studio on a farm in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she was surrounded by sheep and lambs owned by her landlady. “It was a very humbling experience,” says Kimbra, who moved in the day after winning two Grammy Awards, including “Record of the Year,” for the No. 1 single “Somebody That I Used To Know” with Gotye. “I had just been through the Gotye stuff and the Grammy’s, and all the touring. You get very wrapped up in it all. Then you’re chilling with a bunch of sheep, and they don’t give a crap who you are.”
The result of her labors is The Golden Echo, which was produced by Rich Costey (Foster The People, Interpol, Muse), who has been on her dream list of collaborators since she was 15. The lyrics find her grappling with a range of subject matter, from feeling nostalgic about young love on “90s Music,” to being caught up in a place of narrowness on “Mad House,” to wanting to run away and make a new life on “Carolina,” to the vulnerability that follows succumbing to temptation on “Be Everlovin’ Ya.” Kimbra wrote several of the songs with Daniel Johns from Silverchair, another idol of hers.
Sonically, the album is a riot of genres: ’70s disco (“Miracle”), Prince-like funk (“Madhouse”), playful, sing-songy electro-pop (“90s Music”), eerie space-age hip-hop (“Goldmine”), plus an emotionally resonant piano ballad, “As You Are,” with a string arrangement by Van Dyke Parks. Her lo-fi bedroom aesthetic is filled out by the playing of the musicians, who include drummerJohn JR Robinson, (Michael Jackson’s main studio drummer, who played on five of the tracks), as well as several special guests: Muse’s Matt Bellamy (“90s Music”), bassist Thundercat, rapper Flying Lotus, Dirty Projector’s Dave Longstreth, Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (“Carolina”), R&B singer Bilal (“Be Everlovin’ Ya”), and mega-star John Legend (“Nobody But You”).
The Golden Echo is Kimbra’s second album. Her 2011 debut, Vows, bowed at No. 14 on theBillboard Top 200 and was certified platinum in Australia and New Zealand. Kimbra exploded into the public consciousness that same year with “Somebody That I Used To Know,” a duet with Gotye that earned her Grammy Awards for “Record of the Year” and “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.” The song topped Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in 2012 and was the best-selling song of that year in the U.S. It has sold more than 13 million copies.
More about The Golden Echo will be revealed in the coming weeks.