Low Tide to Release New Album BREAD & ROSES

New York City duo Low Tide have announced their second album, BREAD & ROSES, out October 23. The band has shared the first single, 'Fire,' from the record.

The experience of falling in love is one of the most common things in the world, and love songs are as old as songs themselves. But the love songs that make up Low Tide's second album, BREAD & ROSES (out October 23), aren't ordinary love songs. Singer and violinist Eli Oberman said, 'I started affectionately referring to them as anti-capitalist love songs. What I mean by that is that I'm writing about love through the prism of rage. Rage at not being able to love or live fully because in order to survive, we have to trade the limited hours of our lives for someone else's profit.' They joked, 'I guess being in love just really makes me want to seize the means of production, what can I say'.

The sense of time being our most precious resource weaves throughout BREAD & ROSES. In 'Fire', Oberman laments, 'Our time is not our own.' As the first single (and opening track) off Low Tide's second album, BREAD & ROSES, 'Fire' captures the tension at the heart of the album. After the lilting 6/8 arpeggios of Courtney Robbins' opening guitar give way to a quiet chugging rhythm, singer Eli Oberman begins with the line, 'I feel hopelessly worn down' but then follows it immediately with, 'but I light up when you're around'. And so begins the back and forth between the exhaustion and frustration they express about daily life and labor and exalting their love as they stand together by the ocean. They sing, 'the waves are a marching band/ praising the glory of the night/ for you' and then the feelings merge into one as they belt out the chorus, 'Fire', an expression of both passions, of love and anger. The band's first album, The Alchemist focused on the four elements of wind, water, earth, and fire, and while 'Fire' sounds brighter and more optimistic than the songs on The Alchemist, there is continuity in the way Oberman repeatedly turns to nature as a way of expressing their world. To describe the kinetic quality of their love, they sing, 'the stars start their leaping/ their dancing/ their gleaming in the night/ for you. Oberman says, 'I knew there was something magical about this song right away. I couldn't stop playing it to myself, and the first time I performed it people kept coming up to me after singing the chorus to me'.

In 'Back to Me', 'Now that I'm older/ I know what time can do'; In 'We Come From Stars', 'Time is the only currency/ and the price is always too steep/ The hours are unforgiving/ that's the real cost of living here'. And in the title track 'Bread and Roses' they sing, 'Hearts starve as well as bodies/ give us bread but give us roses'. 'That summed up everything for me', Oberman said of the song. They continued, 'We need to be fighting for more than survival. We need to be fighting for a world where we can love, make art, be good stewards of the earth, and feed each others' spirits'. Oberman grew up in a folk music family where singing together was a regular activity, and 'Bread and Roses', a women's labor song from 1911, was always their favorite. So in classic folk tradition, they decided to write their own version with original music and small lyrical adaptations. 'I made that song the foundation on which I built everything else', they said.

Oberman and Robbins, who are both trans and nonbinary, formed Low Tide to return to both of their folk roots after playing together in feminist punk band The Shondes, and Oberman's voice and Robbins' silky electric guitar form the heart of their sound. Robbins' voice is also a constant presence in harmonies that both ground and lift up Oberman's voice, and they sing lead on 'Bite the Hand'. Their voices are a juxtaposition, Robbins' airy rasp to Oberman's sweetness, yet they braid together to create something that feels solid, reliable, something you can relax into. They recorded BREAD & ROSES in Brooklyn with their longtime producer and collaborator Fen Ikner, who also contributed drums, bass and keys to the album. Oberman said, 'I wrote most of these songs in isolation during the pandemic, which isn't usually how I like to write. So when we got to the studio, hearing Courtney's guitar parts layer, hearing the Wurlitzer, the organ, drums and bass, it felt like I had been there when the songs were born, but this was the first time I felt them truly come to life'. Robbins added, 'The studio felt like a magical little world where the songs really started to shine. And we wanted this album to feel really human. No AI, no autotune, just three people playing music in a room together. One of my favorite moments was when Fen turned an accidental squeak of the drum stool at the beginning of 'Back to Me' into a sample that we used as a rhythm in the song'.

As the album continues to unfurl, Robbins' lush electric guitar lines and Oberman's vocals swirl around each other as love becomes past tense. On 'Back to Me', they sing, 'I pray that you're safe/ and I pray that you're free/ and I'm praying you back to me'. 'This felt anti-capitalist to me too,' they explained. 'Loving someone doesn't entitle you to them. Loving someone doesn't mean you own them. I might miss someone, wish for a different outcome, but what I wish for more than anything is for them to be safe and free. To be happy. To find peace'. The result is something that sounds both yearning and settled, with Robbin's guitar lines both restrained and somehow shimmering, comforting. And 'I Was Wrong' wrestles with feelings of failure in both love and work as Oberman sings, 'Thought that I could make it/ with the power of my will/ Thought that I could push/ that boulder up the hill, but I was wrong' and 'Thought that I knew/ what I saw in your eyes/ but I was wrong' only to find solace in the next song, one of the sweetest on the album, 'All Around Me'. 'Love changes you for the better no matter what happens', Oberman said. They sing, 'People tell me they can see it/ all over me/ People tell me they can feel it/ all around me/ They say my eyes shine brighter now/ more alive somehow'.

The final track 'The Ones Like You' returns to the swaying 6/8 where the album began, but this time with a sense of pensive quietude and acceptance. Gone are the jagged edges of 'Fire', and what's left is a sense of peace amid the recognition that nothing has really changed and a piano line that both hurts a heavy heart and uplifts it. 'I know you feel like your dreams are a waste', Oberman sings, 'and it only hurts more if you're lucky enough/ to have had a taste'. 'Only some of the songs on this album are about romantic love', they explained. 'Part of being an anti-capitalist in love means recognizing the beauty and value of different kinds of love. I wrote this song about a brilliant friend of mine and was inspired by a line from a movie I saw when I was a kid called Birdie. I'm sure I'm getting it wrong, but the way I remember it is 'I know what it's like to be good at something no one wants'. That's part of the violence of capitalism too, all the art and small acts of creation that we're all capable of getting swallowed up because our culture only thinks something is valuable if it makes money. It's so painful to be good at something that no one wants. It really haunts me'.

Low Tide can be found on Bandcamp, Subvert, and Spotify.

Photo Credit: Marquis Facey L-R: Courtney Robbins + Eli Oberman

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