Attawalpa – release the new single with video ‘Always The Girls’

‘Always The Girls‘ is the first track from the new album ‘EXPERIENCE‘, which follows Attawalpa’s  2022 debut ‘Presence‘. “‘Always The Girls’ is a song born around my embarrassment/guilt about being a man’” explains Felber. “The general lack of emotional wisdom that comes with that coupled with my observations of being calmer and happier around feminine energy. It’s a celebration of our mothers”. The release comes with a meditation of a video shot mainly in the underground tunnels of London. Ending in a celebration. As it should. Directed by long-time collaborator Emma Chitty.

Reflecting on the forthcoming album, Luis explains “It’s about acknowledging all that lived experience, good and bad. But it’s equally about the experience of playing with this band.” Attawalpa started as a sort of solo project, with me and producer/bassist/co-conspirator Matt Allchin, but now it’s grown into this 6-piece ‘family’, where everyone’s creative, and we all have each other’s backs.” 

That live ensemble – featuring long-time Attawalpa drummer Henry Danowski, veteran percussionist Maurizio Ravalico (Jamiroquai), viola player  Freya Hicks (Jockstrap, The Big Moon), keyboardist/actor Adam Sopp and multi-instrumentalist. On the record including Haydn Wynn (Rosie Alena, Blossom Calderone) and Matt Jones (Jamie T, Ultrasound), in addition to Messrs Felber and Allchin – cut its collective teeth working on Felber-composed soundtracks for a brace of 2022 Lena Dunham movies, ‘Sharp Stick’ and ‘Catherine Called Birdy’, as well as playing high profile Attawalpa shows during much of 2022-23. These included sharing bills with Bruce Springsteen, Grace Jones, The Rolling Stones, Phoebe Bridgers and The War on Drugs at BST in Hyde Park and with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Spiritualized and Aldous Harding at All Points East in Victoria Park, in addition to sell-out headline shows at London venues The Lexington and Ivy House and a memorable Margate performance on artist Tracy Emin’s roof.

“It’s quite dreamlike” professes Attawalpa aka Luis Felber, describing his current creative life in which polishing songs for his band’s second full-length album, out later in the year, has been synthesised with his role as co-creator, co-writer and executive music producer on the forthcoming Netflix series, ‘Too Much’. The latter, a collaboration with Felber’s director/producer/actor wife, Lena Dunham, tells the story of a transatlantic love affair between a struggling London musician and a heartbroken New Yorker. “We shot that show in 5 months at the beginning of 2024 – I felt like a mixture of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche New York and Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. What a wild, wild ride”.

All of which has been grist for the mill of the new album ‘Experience’ – a record whose broad sonic vocabulary helps upgrade the shapeshifting baroque pop-rock groove template of debut long player, ‘Presence’, which had charmed critics back in the autumn of 2022. Captured at Allchin’s south London Off Licence facility the results on ‘Experience’ are as rich in texture as they are in rhythm and melody. There is pop gold here – not least the contagiously dreamy ‘Always the Girls’ with its teasingly conspiratorial, semi-whispered vocal (“Give me the honey / I just want the honey”), slippering guitar figures and graceful viola and cello parts that recall Johnny Greenwood arrangements for Radiohead’s In Rainbows album. 

“I’m really proud of the album”, he concludes. “I really want people to hear it. I’m blessed that we’re making a TV show that’s going to include a few of the album songs, which millions of people are potentially going to hear, and all without me having to sign half of my rights over to a company… It’s an amazing privilege. All that said, I’m always anxious about sharing my work!” 

Tue 1 April – Below Stone Nest, London – FREE TICKETS