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May 05, 2020 By Samantha Small Gordi

“I have these moments where I panic/When I shut down and go manic,” admits Australian musician Gordi (aka Sophie Payten) on her new single “Volcanic.” “Volcanic” is the third single Gordi has shared (following “Aeroplane Bathroom” and “Sandwiches”) off her new album Our Two Skins, from Jagjaguwar and out June 26. Although she wrote the tune two years ago while wrestling with her identity and grasping with the paradox of her Christian family and Australia’s same-sex marriage vote, Gordi’s tension and anxiety is more appropriate than ever now. The gorgeous arrangement was born behind the kitchen at Berlin’s Michelberger Hotel during PEOPLE Festival. The same piano is even included in her newest record—you can even hear the clanging of pots and pans in the background of a few of the tracks. Notwithstanding, Gordi’s “Volcano” is painstakingly beautiful with her rich tone and candid lyrics.

Our Two Skins, unsurprisingly, was written post a nervous breakdown on a flight from Australia to Europe back in 2017. Payten had just earned a medical degree—a degree that she hopes to use to help out during the COVID-19 crisis. Currently on standby with a variety of hospitals, she is eager to return to wards when possible.

“I’ll dig out my work backpack, make sure my stethoscope is functioning as it should and go back to my other life; it will likely be in a more frantic state than I left it,” Payten says in a press release.

This “other life” is the crux of Our Two Skins. As evident from the blend of Gordi’s frustration and confusion found in the “Volcanic” video (shot by Madeleine Purdy around Payten’s hometown of Canowindra), the album is a journey through an intense and life-changing realization of just who Payten really is and how she fits in the world.

Payten had this to say about “Volcanic” in the press release: “It speaks to a rush of anxiety—about why, about what is real and what is not, about the drama of it, about the vortex of it. When it surges you can feel paralyzed and out of control at the same time—‘shut down’ and ‘manic.’ Its self-destructive nature can be so crippling. I wanted the song to feel like a wave of anxiety. The tempo never changes but the piano solo starts at half-time and rushes until it is double the speed, though the beat never changes. And then suddenly; it’s over.”

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