Catharina Jaunviksna, aka Badlands, returned with new single and video, Hearts, featuring Irish musician, J. Cowhie, and introducing her new album expected out next year on the self-run label, RITE.
The entire album is a memorial to Jaunviksna's late mother who passed under unclear circumstances. Each of the album's tracks deals with "the art of letting go in different ways - through resilience, sorrow and spirituality."
Like with Jaunviksna's previous works, the new album utilizes influence from diverse musical sources, like the modern electronica of Boards of Canada, the dreampop elegance of The Radio Dept. (of which she is also a touring member) and the shoegaze fuzziness of My Bloody Valentine. This multifarious compositional character is fairly manifested in the fresh synthpop liveliness of Hearts, which finds Badlands at her most open and cordial mode thus far.
"Hearts is an inverted love song about sticking together because you don’t have a choice, and fusing after sharing a lot of hard times together," Jaunviksna describes.
Artist photo by Rickard Grönkvist
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ZR