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Aug 24, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Grant Spanier

GUM is releasing a new album, Saturnia, on September 15 via Spinning Top. Now he has shared another new song from it, “Music Is Bigger Than Hair,” via a music video. GUM is the solo project Australian psych-pop musician Jay Watson, who is also a member of both Tame Impala and POND. Listen to “Music Is Bigger Than Hair” below, followed by GUM’s upcoming U.S. tour dates this October.

Watson had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Music Is Bigger Than Hair’ is a funny title, I think it’s referring to me getting older and feeling my mortality a little bit more, or at least my worth as a musician being tied up in the way I look. Feeling like it’s affecting my music, as if it has anything to do with it. Musically it’s one of my favorites because of Jesse Kotanskys beautiful string arrangement.”

Saturnia includes “Race to the Air,” a new song GUM shared in May that was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was announced in July Watson shared its single “Would It Pain You to See?”

Of writing the new album, Watson says: “Because of COVID and because I had a new kid, for the first time ever I would write songs and think about them months on end. I’d always been a bit of a lazy arranger, but this time I was working on different sections in my head for months.”

Of his intentions with Saturnia, Watson says: “My dream was to make one coherent record that sounded the same all the way through, but it’s just so hard when you like so much different stuff! I wanted the whole album to sound like Nick Drake at the very beginning, but it just doesn’t work out like that. I’ve got so much equipment and stuff to play with that even if I start with something that sounds like Nick Drake, I’ll starting adding things and playing with it and it will take it away into somewhere else immediately.”

GUM’s last album was 2020’s Out In the World, released via Spinning Top.

In 2020 we interviewed Watson as part of our COVID-19 Quarantine Artist Check In series and you can read that interview here.

GUM Tour Dates:

Wed Oct 4 | Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY*
Sat Oct 7 | Black Cat - Washington, D.C.*
Tue Oct 10 | Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL*
Thu Oct 12 | Parish - Austin, TX#
Fri Oct 13 | White Oak Music Hall - Houston, TX#
Sat Oct 14 | Club Dada - Dallas, TX#
Wed Oct 18 | Great American Music Hall - San Francisco, CA
Fri Oct 20 | Madame Lou’s - Seattle, WA (early show)
Sun Oct 22 | Polaris Hall - Portland, OR
Thu Oct 26 | Lodge Room - Los Angeles, CA

* with support from GIFT
# with support from Estereomance

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