Dana Gavanski has shared the third track ‘Ears Were Growing’ from her kaleidoscopic new album Late Slap, released April 5th.
Encapsulating the eighties zeal of Talking Heads or Klaus Nomi, pitching fantasy against reality through playful lyrics about negative self-talk, the domestic interior, equal parts comfort and fear. Dana expands of the track:
“‘Ears Were Growing’ is an escapists dream that spirals back to the reality of still being stuck on the same old sofa with the same old thoughts. Thoughts that, though depressive and negative, have taken on a twisted but comforting companionship, a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Its what happens when I try to make a Talking Heads-esque track.”
LATE SLAP, Gavanski’s third album, gives voice to the highs and lows of the mindscape in all its joys and terrors, injecting some much-needed playfulness into the process of writing about emotionally hard things. “The album holds together the seemingly disparate aspects of my character that I have sometimes tried to repress,” says Dana. “With this album I’m letting them into the room, celebrating them for all their strangeness – a strangeness which I think we all, on some level, share.”
Recorded with Mike Lindsay (Tunng, LUMP) at MESS, the producer’s studio in Margate, with her five-piece band, which includes co-producer James Howard (Rozi Plain, Alabaster dePlume). “I knew Mike could help me find the range of sound I was looking for; he has an amazing attention to sonic detail and we’ve worked well together on previous records.” Lindsay acquired a Yamaha DX7 synth at Dana’s request just for the album, and they used it to conjure an atmosphere of digital warmth that recalls the Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s meditative masterpiece Keyboard Fantasies.
Late Slap is what its title suggests—a sudden jolt, a shock to the system that seeks to reconnect with the messy flesh-and-thought humanity of simply being human. The album’s tension between cynicism and trust, openness and despair, melodrama and silliness.
LATE SLAP track list
How To Feel Uncomfortable
Let Them Row
Late Slap
Ears Were Growing
Singular Coincidence
Song For Rachel
Eye On Love
Ribbon
Dark Side
Reiteration
Late Slap released 5th April on vinyl, CD and digital via Full Time Hobby. Pre-order various formats here.
Live Dates
April
5th – Brighton Resident [instore]
6th – Leeds The Vinyl Whistle [instore]
7th – Glasgow Monorail [instore]
19th – Rotterdam Motel Mozaique
May
22nd – Brighton The Albert
24th – Norwich Arts Centre
25th – Ramsgate Music Hall
27th – Bristol Beacon
29th – Manchester SOUP
30th – Wharf Chambers Leeds
31st – The Hug & Pint Glasgow
Phot credit – press photo