Smoke Fairies to Release Holiday-Themed Collection WILD WINTER, 11/20

Smoke Fairies are set to release a holiday-themed collection of 10 songs entitled WILD WINTER. Last year, the LP sold out entirely when it was released in limited edition run and sold exclusively Rough Trade Record Store in the U.K as the December Album of the Month. On November 20, Full Time Hobby will release the album via all digital and physical retailers. Listen to the title track below!

In the very hot summer of 2014, Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies of Smoke Fairies holed themselves up in the house that they share with the curtains drawn and started writing a collection of songs focusing on wintertime, Christmas, blizzards, isolation and presents. The process took the duo on a journey through Christmas past, present and future, sometimes touching on family tradition and the role religion plays in their yearly celebrations and even imagined themselves as the three kings. They then took their band into a recording studio in Kent, stayed in a local youth hostel and for a week and set about recording most of the tracks live. With the help of producer Kristofer Harris they finished WILD WINTER and the autumn had not even set in!

When asked why they chose to focus on a seasonally-themed record, the band explained, "We have a love/hate relationship with winter and the Christmas holiday. When it was suggested Smoke Fairies make a Christmas album the last thing we wanted to do was make a classic, jolly, celebratory album that can only be played once a year. Sometimes winter provides us with a sense of togetherness and love and sometimes it leaves us feeling alienated, cold and playing a glockenspiel alone in a darkened room. It's part of the year that will always be bittersweet and wild. This was the inspiration behind the record." The duo said for the song "Bad Good" they "cast our minds back to out childhood selves in the '80s" and went on to say "that we nearly drove ourselves to the brink of insanity" trying to bring order to a cover of Captain Beefheart's "Steal Softly Thru Snow."

In the six years together since entering a recording studio for the first time, Smoke Fairies have self-released several singles and were first introduced to American audiences with their 7" Gastown/River Song via Third Man Records, which Jack White produced and play drums on. The band has toured the world with the likes of Brian Ferry, Richard Hawley and Laura Marling. Time Out New York noted they were one of the "Top 5 Must See Bands" at the 2010 CMJ Festival while their 2011 album Through Low Light and Trees was named one of American Songwriter's Top 50 albums of 2011.

WILD WINTER follows the bands' 2012 release Blood Speaks of which Pitchfork said that Blamire and Davies "don't trade vocal duties so much as appear to sing from the same body, their voices nearly indistinguishable, shifting between smoky moans and toe-curling trills" and their eponymously titled album was released in 2014 of which For Folks Sake said "Smoke Fairies are attempting to creatively push themselves into and beyond the ether."

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