Birmingham-based singer/songwriter Katherine Priddy released The Eternal Rocks Beneath, her elemental and evocative debut album, in 2021. The release received glowing reviews across the music press. It was also a featured Album of the Month on Folk Radio, where David Weir described it as “A debut of true substance, it’s like searching for a simple shelter and stumbling upon a diamond mine.”
Today, Katherine has announced her sophomore album, The Pendulum Swing, to be released on February 16 2024, via Cooking Vinyl. The first single, ‘First House on the Left‘, is released today and accompanied by a music video filmed in Birmingham by Robin Beatty. As mentioned in our previous review and discussed in our follow-up interview, even before she pursued her love of literature at the University of Sussex, her command of language and songcraft appears to have been remarkably well-rounded. In our interview, she offered a great insight into some of that inspiration when discussing Frank O’Hara’s ‘Lunchtime Poems’:
“I like the way he uses names, places and moments, and never explains them. So, you feel like you’re either looking at him through a window or walking behind him down the street for five minutes, capturing fragments of conversation. There’s something about that almost voyeuristic style that I really like. I think that’s what songs should be like, just a brief little insight into something. It doesn’t all have to be explained.” – Read the full interview here.
With her new single, Katherine almost seems to capture fragments of memory across time as she brings to life a house, lived in by generations, and we are invited to spend time there – a place where ‘the stories we write have been told here before’ and where ‘all the voices still breathe in these walls…’. What does a house represent to us…it is so much more than just the “first house on the left”.
In our earlier interview, Katherine shared how the blackbird that starts and finishes her debut album is “the most evocative sound of childhood for me as it was always the last thing I’d hear before I went to bed in the summer and the first thing I’d hear when I woke up. Whenever I hear blackbirds on warm evenings, I am immediately transported back to my childhood bedroom (and my Hedwig pyjamas).” Returning to the nostalgia of the past is still a strong magnet, and no doubt comfort, for Katherine; talking about the song and album, Katherine reveals:
“Despite its soft and dreamy sound, this song provides the cornerstone around which the album and its themes orbit. It’s inspired by the little old house where I grew up and all the memories captured within those four walls – both for me and for all the other inhabitants who’ve lived there over the centuries. It might just be another terraced cottage to passersby, but to those who’ve called it home, it’s everything.
“The album title, The Pendulum Swing, is taken from a line in this song and describes the urge to leave and the even stronger urge to return – something I’ve felt a lot in recent few years as I’ve tried to carve out a corner for myself elsewhere, but always found myself wandering back, craving the comfort and nostalgia of the past.
“It also sums up this second album as a whole quite nicely – my songs have matured since my debut, seeing as most of those were written in my childhood, but despite moving forward and feeling the need to do something different with this second release, I still can’t help but return to those fundamental, unchanging things at the root of it all: home, family, love.
“Overall, I wanted this song and the album to feel lived in, and this is captured in part by the ghostly atmospheres, mechanical clockwork sounds, creaking floorboards, indistinct whispers and old tape recordings of my family that are littered throughout. I want to invite the listener to come in, sit down and inhabit the album for a little while, and this song is right at the heart of that.”
Stream First House on the Left: https://KPriddy.lnk.to/FirstHouseOnTheLeftPR
Katherine will take to the road next May for a headline tour in support of The Pendulum Swing:
Katherine Priddy Tour Dates
Wed 01 May BRISTOL Strange Brew
Thu 02 May EXETER Phoenix
Fri 03 May CARDIFF Acapela Studios
Sat 04 May SHOREHAM Ropetackle Arts Centre
Sun 05 May BIRMINGHAM The Glee Club
Tue 07 May MILTON KEYNES The Stables
Wed 08 May MANCHESTER Band on the Wall
Thu 09 May LIVERPOOL Philharmonic Music Room
Fri 10 May DUBLIN The Sugar Club
Sat 11 May BELFAST St Joseph’s Church
Tue 14 May KENDAL Brewery Arts
Wed 15 May YORK The Crescent
Thu 16 May SALTAIRE The Live Room
Fri 17 May LONDON Union Chapel
Tickets: https://www.katherinepriddy.co.uk/
The Pendulum Swing track listing:
1 . Returning [01:27]
2 . Selah [04:58]
3 . First House On The Left [03:49]
4 . These Words Of Mine [04:25]
5 . Does She Hold You Like I Did [04:05]
6 . Northern Sunrise [04:13]
7 . A Boat On The River [03:47]
8 . Father Of Two [04:42]
9 . Anyway, Always [04:17]
10 . Walnut Shell [04:00]
11 . Ready To Go [03:20]
12 . Leaving [01:13]