For over a decade now, New Zealand–born and Melbourne-based songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick has been honing her one-of-a-kind, sparsely accompanied baroque-pop ballads that have maintained a certain disaffected introspection (and fairly grotesque, self-created album art aesthetic) through her shift from guitar-based compositions to a primary focus on piano. Her eighth and latest collection of tracks, Messages to God, feels like something of a full-circle moment considering it’s her first for Kill Rock Stars, and one of the first recordings she ever uploaded to Bandcamp was an Elliott Smith cover.
While Chadwick’s lyrics have always mined personal territory (hers or Smith’s, I suppose), the latest single from her new album takes an optimistic turn in its celebration of the kind of friend who’s willing to go out with you mid-week for a drink—or any similar, non-humanoid pillar in your life that helps you straighten out when things have gotten rough. “I think the lyrics to this song are kind of a starter kit for how to survive and bounce back in life,” Chadwick shares of “Drinkin’ on a Tuesday,” a grandiose, densely packed response to the pained piano ballad “Shitty Town” which arrived alongside news of the album. “It’s less about drinking and more about the funny stop/starts of being alive.”
The track’s Stacey Sian–directed video illustrates this type of relationship as it depicts a night out at a bar (presumably on a Tuesday) with a dear friend. Check it out below, and pre-order Messages to God—executive produced by The Avalanches’ Tony Espie—before it arrives September 15 here.
