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Jun 26, 2019 SOAK By Christopher Roberts

SOAK (Northern Ireland singer/songwriter Bridie Monds-Watson) released a new album, Grim Town, in April via Rough Trade. Last night she stopped by Late Night with Seth Meyers to perform the album’s “Déjà Vu,” in her national TV debut. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist.

Grim Town includes “Everybody Loves You,” which she shared back in October 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.

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.

SOAK Tour Dates:

06/28 - Somerset, UK @ Glastonbury Festival
08/02 - Beauly, UK @ Belladrum Festival
08/03 - Oxfordshire, UK @ Wilderness Festival
08/11 - Cornwall, UK @ Boardmasters Festival
08/24 - Northants, UK @ Greenbelt Festival

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