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Jun 23, 2020 By Christopher Roberts and Samantha Small Gordi

Australian musician Gordi (Sophie Payten) is releasing her new album, Our Two Skins, this Friday via Jagjaguwar. Now she has shared one last pre-release single from the album, “Extraordinary Life,” via a video for it that was filmed in Bangkok. Kasimir Burgess directed and edited the video. Watch and listen below.

In a press release Payten had this to say about the new song: “I was standing in a shower in a hostel in Ghent at 2am towards the end of 2017 and I started humming. I began recording the demo in stairwells across Europe while I was on tour with Asgeir and in most of the demo vocals you can hear distant chatter in Icelandic. For all the turmoil and anguish described in the record, this song just sits in pure joy. I like the idea that the ultimate gesture of love is to make someone feel exceptional; like they deserve an extraordinary life.”

She had this to say about the video: “As the pandemic was taking off in March of this year, I flew to Bangkok to shoot a video for ‘Aeroplane Bathroom.’ We decided while we were there that we’d cram in another video so we just shot wherever we went—the grand piano in the lobby of our hotel, on public transport, at the local markets. On our last day there we went to a water theme park and I had to go down the slippery slide nine times. I get really bad motion sickness so I felt like absolute shit at the end of making this.”

Burgess, who also directed the video for “Aeroplane Bathroom,” had this to say about the “Extraordinary Life” video: “The clip evolved in a playful, improvisational way on the streets of Bangkok. I fell in love with the joy and sadness of Gordi’s track. My early ideas for the clip centred around a human to human relationship, however there felt to be more humanity in making the relationship about a human and a skin eating fish. I guess you could say that I’ve chosen to interpret ‘Extraordinary Life’ as a messed up love song to nature.”

Previously Payten has shared four singles from Our Two Skins: “Aeroplane Bathroom,” “Sandwiches,” “Volcanic,” and “Unready.” “Volcanic” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Our Two Skins, 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 said in a previous press release.

This “other life” is the crux of Our Two Skins. 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.

Gordi 2021 Tour Dates with Bon Iver:

Sat. March 27 - Adelaide, Australia @ AEC Arena
Mon. March 29 - Melbourne, Australia @ Rod Laver
Thu. April 1 - Brisbane, Australia @ Riverstage
Mon. April 5 - Sydney, Australia @ ICC
Tue. April 6 - Sydney, Australia @ ICC

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