Back in January, Allison Lorenzen set the scene for what would be her debut solo record with the single “Vale,” which featured fellow Denver dream-pop songwriter Midwife in what felt like the rare song outside of Madeline Johnson’s own discography for which her genre term “heaven metal” could apply. The mounting drama of that single gave way to news of Lorenzen’s forthcoming Tender LP, which features a few more Midwife collabs, as well as the newly unveiled single “Backwards,” which exhibits a dramatic spaciousness that more closely recalls Enya as its chorus peaks.
“‘Backwards’ was written during early lock down of April 2020 and attempts to reconcile the desire for intimacy, warmth, and connectivity with the acknowledgement of social responsibility for isolation during a time of global chaos and uncertainty,” Lorenzen explains of the track. Meanwhile, the spaciousness heard on the recording lends itself perfectly to the visual she prepared for it, which reveals another natural-seeming collaboration.
“Hana Erdman and I met 14 years ago—both attending a dance festival in East Germany as dancers—and we just started singing together one day while in the studio,” she adds, referring to one of the dancers featured in the “Backwards” video. “We unlocked something that neither of us knew was within us when we began writing songs together. This was the inception of our collaboration that incorporated movement and song, and we quickly toured the project to an art barge in Denmark as a live performance installation. Over the years, we have worked together in several live performance contexts, and this is the first time in which I created solely in the sonic realm, and Hana in the movement/visual realm. The video, filmed in Orlångens Nature Reserve, Sweden, is an excerpt from a larger body of work, SLOWDANCES, that Hana and Louise Dahl have been developing in their long-term research collaboration.”
Watch the clip below, and pre-order Tender—which drops November 19 via Whited Sepulchre Records—here.
