ALASKALASKA Releases New Single And Video For 'Tough Love'

South London based group ALASKALASKA have this morning shared "Tough Love" - the sparklingly acerbic second single from their thrilling debut album The Dots - due out this Friday, May 3rd on Marathon Artists. "Tough Love" comes accompanied by brilliant new animator Callum Scott-Dyson's hallucinogenic visuals which draw on organic and biological imagery, paying homage to the single's strength and protest message.

Watch the video!

Providing an insight into the single and video ALASKALASKA's vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Lucinda Duarte-Holman said, "'Tough Love' is a protest and a paradox. It is an invite to each individual listener to interpret however they like." Animator Scott-Dyson orginally wanted to mirror nature, reproduction and the human body in his visuals, but once the track's lyrics embedded, he changed tack, "I didn't think having abstract patterns and things would suffice. So something of a loose structure began to build, based on someone being captured and their thoughts and feelings being harvested into seeds. It went in more of a sci-fi based direction but all done in very loose, obscure ways." The new single - along with "Moon" and "Bees" - are perfectly at home on a record packed with fluid, intelligent and utterly remarkable left-of-centre pop songs.

Following the release of The Dots this Friday, May 3rd, ALASKALASKA will be heading out once again on a headline tour of the U.K. - which includes a homecoming show at Omeara on May 15th. Tickets for all of the dates are available HERE.

Headed by Duarte-Holman and bassist and producer Fraser Rieley, ALASKALASKA formed in 2016 after Duarte-Holman introduced Rieley to her friends Calum Duncan (guitarist), Fraser Smith (saxophonist), and Gethin Jones (drummer). The resulting recordings - early self-titled EP and 2018 singles 'Meateater' and 'Monster' - combined an appreciation for pop songwriting form with a myriad of sounds, tastes and styles. ALASKALASKA's idiosyncratic approach grabbed them attention from Pitchfork, The FADER, Noisey, NME, DIY, and beyond, while support slots with fellow genre-dodgers Alvvays, Cigarettes After Sex, Porches and Nilüfer Yanya soon followed.

Melding together those disparate influences in off-kilter pop and jazz gives their upcoming debut record the push-pull feeling of a group existing without any boundaries, painting their influences in their own broad brushstrokes in the same way as Björk, Kate Bush, Arca or Fever Ray before them. Whether it's consumer society ('Bees'), vulnerability ('Skin' and 'Sweat'), a willingness to be loved ('Arrows'), or ruminations on the nature of creativity itself ('Tough Love'), the record deals in the countless intimacies and idiosyncrasies which make up a human's sense of self.

Their debut albumwas written and recorded between Rieley's living room and a more traditional, professional studio set-up (with co-producer Tom Carmichael), and the band limited their takes of each part to just a handful of attempts in order to retain the spontaneity of a first take's 'eureka' moment. "For most of the songs, we build on guides that we had - rough, scratchy demos," Rieley explains, "a fair bit of the audio is taken straight from them, because we got things that we liked, and didn't think we could reproduce." It's a process the helps The Dots retain its humanity, rather than losing it to over-polishing. "If it works, why get rid of it? It felt important to keep that element of it," says Rieley. "Sometimes there's a beauty in the roughness," adds Duarte-Holman. "We all really enjoy the rough edges - the bits that make it growl."

The Dots is testament to the beauty of those more roughed-up elements. From the dirty, dingy intimacies of the human condition, to the musical happy accidents and living room recordings that made it to the final record, it's a release that presents ALASKALASKA as masters of twisting the day-to-day into something dazzling. "I think that's always the most interesting stuff," admits Rieley, "Where there's an accessibility to it, but something else that confuses you, or challenges you."

See ALASKALASKA live at the following dates:

May 14 | The Green Door Store, Brighton
May 15 | Omeara, London
May 16 | Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
May 17 | Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
May 19 | YES, Manchester
May 20 | The Hug And Pint, Glasgow

May 22 | Rough Trade, Bristol

Aug 24 | Lost Village Festival, Lincolnshire

ALASKALASKA -

The Dots - out 05/03/19 via Marathon Artists

Photo Credit: Elliott Arndt

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