Vanessa Carlton unveils a haunting new track titled “Miner’s Canary” that captures Carlton like we have never heard her before. She paints a vivid portrait of the insidious ways in which what looks like cruelty to the outside observer can be perceived as love and power by the person down in the caves. Blame is neither taken nor explicitly placed, but that doesn’t stop the fury and pain from being unfurled through her arpeggiating piano with gutting intensity. All the while, her gasps for air break through to the surface, growing more frequent and more intense until they converge with the crescendo of the piano scrambling out into a warped, electronic scream.
The track is off her upcoming studio album Love Is An Art, out March 27, 2020 via Dine Alone Records. Love Is An Art, produced by Dave Fridmann (MGMT, Flaming Lips), explores the eternal seesaw that is human connection: the push, the pull, the balance, the bottoming out. It’s that constantly evolving nature of love, expectations and compassion that Carlton analyzes from all angles on Love Is An Art, from romantic, to parental, to the friends that hold us up and the leaders that repeatedly let us down. The album doesn’t just explore connections – it was also born of one. Carlton wrote the album with the acclaimed Nashville-based singer-songwriter Tristen, camped out and working while her daughter napped. The result is an extremely dynamic LP filled with sticky melodies and haunting phrases as well as experimental constructions: super high highs, super low lows, and song structures that break the mold from the expected. Unlike her previous, critically-acclaimed 2015 album Liberman, which Carlton describes as having a calming, almost meditative palette, Love Is An Art reads, and sounds, “red.” Huge. Passionate. The color of a beating heart.
Available Singles:
“Miner’s Canary”
“The Only Way To Love”
Love Is An Art Tracklisting:
1. I Can’t Stay The Same
2. Companion Star
3. I Know You Don’t Mean It
4. Die, Dinosaur
5. Love Is An Art
6. Future Pain
7. Back To Life
8. Patience
9. The Only Way To Love
10. Salesman
11. Miner’s Canary
