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Nov 25, 2019 By Christopher Roberts SOAK

SOAK (Northern Ireland singer/songwriter Bridie Monds-Watson) released a new album, Grim Town, in April via Rough Trade. Now she has shared a cover of The National’s “Bloodbuzz Ohio” (originally found on the band’s 2010 album High Violet). Listen below.

Monds-Watson had this to say about the cover in a press release: “Matt Berninger is one of my favorite lyricists. There’s something so special about the imagery The National manages to create within their music and I often catch myself imagining each song as its own movie trailer. I love the manic world this song creates.”

SOAK’s Grim Town includes “Everybody Loves You,” which she shared back in October 2018 and was one of our Songs of the Week (she also shared a video for the song), and “Knock Me Off My Feet” (which was also one of our Songs of the Week). Then she shared another song from the album, “Valentine Shmalentine,” which also made our Songs of the Week list. Another new song, “Déjà Vu,” followed in March via a video. Then she shared the non-album track “Country Air,” from the soundtrack to the Finish/British TV kids show Moominvalley. Then she stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers to perform the album’s “Déjà Vu,” in her national TV debut. Then she shared a cover of Sleater-Kinney‘s “Modern Girl,” recorded for Amazon Music as an Amazon Original (and it’s also part of their PROUD playlist of new music from LGBTQ+ artists).

Grim Town is SOAK’s second album, the follow-up to 2015’s debut, Before We Forgot How to Dream. Back then she was only 19 years old, now of course she’s older (22) and likely wiser.

In a previous press release, Monds-Watson said that the central premise of Grim Town is “a dystopia that I’ve created in my brain: me on the inside, processed into a pretend location. The way I could wrap my head around a lot of what I was going through was to make it feel like something quite physical and real. Once I had the idea of the album being an actual location, exploring the dynamics of this town and what it would look or sound like felt like the right way to give my mental state a personality.

Back in December SOAK also shared a cover of Chris Rea’s “Driving Home for Christmas,” via a video of her performing the song.

Read our recent My Firsts interview with SOAK.

Read our review of Grim Town.

Read our 2015 interview with SOAK.

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