Los Angeles-based musician Marina Allen has announced her third studio album, Eight Pointed Star, out June 7th on Fire Records (pre-order here) and shares her lead single/video, “Red Cloud.” The release follows her 2021 debut, Candlepower, described by KLOF Mag as an effortlessly crafted and luxurious listen, and 2022’s Centrifics.
Eight Pointed Star is described as being about discovery, searching with the eight points of a compass, hope, gazing at the emanations within the eight points of the North Star, and ancestry, comforted by the eight-pointed stitching patterns used in quilt-making.
Quilting is widely regarded as one the most beautiful forms of American folk art and, historically, was a prime vehicle of artistic expression for many. Like those early quilts, consisting of fragments of old clothing that inevitably hold memories and stories passed on through generations, Marina’s lead single, Red Cloud, draws on fragments of the past, both her own and those handed down…the real and imagined.
“The imagery surrounding Nebraska has always been really vivid for me. My mom would tell me about how my grandma would ride a pony to school named Daisy. I guess it brought an awareness of how much the world has changed in such a short time, but it also reallytripped me out as a kid,” she says. “We’d be watching The Wizard of Oz and I felt like Dorothy was my heritage. So much of your family narrative defines who you are, and so much of it isn’t true, or you hear it wrong, or you only pick up this one part, passed down by somebody else who only picked up one part. I wanted to play with that. I had all of these images swirling around me, with me at the center, and none of the sources were reliable.”
The accompanying video, directed by Eliel Ford (known for his work with Wes Anderson, Baby Keem, and Travis Scott) and shot on 35mm film in Northern California, brings the song’s imagery to life with an engaging modern folkloric twist. As well as lending itself well to Allen’s own engaging brand of alternative folk and Americana, as a visual metaphor, it works perfectly – balancing pastoral moments of sunlight, light billowing fabric, hair-braiding and basket weaving with grey, dreary urban landscapes through which those fabrics soon become a heavy, an unwelcome weight, the burden of modern life and reality.
Outstanding on all levels.
Talking about the album, Allen says, “As much as you can have will and ambition, those things often get in the way of a fluidity to life, and where you’re supposed to be. You can make yourself dizzy wanting to be somewhere you’re not. With Eight Pointed Star I’m trying to harness that beginner’s mind again, while having the scars and wisdom that come from biting into the fruits of knowledge.”
Eight Pointed Star Tracklisting
- I’m The Same
- Deep Fake
- Red Cloud
- Swinging Doors
- Bad Eye Opal
- Easy
- Love Comes Back
- Landlocked
- Between Seasons
Marina Allen Tour Dates
Fri. April 5 – Montreal, QC @ Beanfield Theatre *
Sat. April 6 – Toronto, ON @ Masonic Temple Concert Hall *
Sun. April 7 – Detroit, MI @ El Club *
Mon. April 8 – Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium *
Wed. April 10 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line *
Thu. April 11 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
Fri. April 12 – Cleveland, OH @ The Roxy at Mahalls *
Sat. April 13 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls *
Mon. April 15 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club *
Tue. April 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
Wed. April 17 – Boston, MA @ Royale Boston *
Thu. April 18 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall *
Sat. April 20 – Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studio *
Thu. June 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble
Wed. June 19 – New York, NY @ Union Pool
Fri. June 21 – London, UK @ The Slaughtered Lamb
Mon. June 24 – Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden w/ Ben Howard
Tue. June 25 – Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway w/ Ben Howard
Wed. June 26 – DR Koncerthusets, Copenhagen, Denmark w/ Ben Howard
Sat June 29 – De Vereeniging, Nijmegen, Netherlands w/ Ben Howard
Sun. June 30 – SPOT / De Oosterpoort, Groningen, Netherlands w/ Ben Howard
* supporting Real Estate