Bedouine — the project of LA-based songwriter Azniv Korkejian — has shared the video for On My Own, the third single from her forthcoming album Neon Summer Skin, released June 5th via Thirty Tigers. Korkejian has also announced new UK and European tour dates this September, including a London show at Milton Court Concert Hall on September 5th.
Produced by Jonathan Rado with contributions from Brian and Michael D’Addario of The Lemon Twigs, On My Own opens the album as a contemplative piano-and-drum ballad. The accompanying video, directed by Pat Shahabian & Azniv Korkejian, sits with the stillness — and potential monotony — of a home occupied alone, no interruptions to fill the rooms.
The song was written after Korkejian returned from what she suspected might be one of her last visits to her parents in Saudi Arabia, before their planned move to Armenia. It introduces themes that thread through Neon Summer Skin: home, displacement, inherited identity, and what it means to come from places that are no longer easily returnable, politically or emotionally.
“I wrote ‘On My Own’ after I returned from visiting my parents in Saudi Arabia. I felt such a deep sense of loss because it was likely one of my last trips there, at least while my parents were still living in the village-like place of my childhood. I was flooded with nostalgia for it all; the chatter in the house, the constant fighting between my brothers, but more than anything the feeling of belonging to something. I felt very lonely and pondered the space between the family you come from and the one you might one day create.”
“On My Own” follows previously released singles “Always on Time” and “Long Way to Fall.” We reviewed Bedouine’s 2017 self-titled debut here, in which Thomas Blake concludes:
If there is such a thing as classic American songwriting, you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be embodied on the debut album of a singer of Armenian descent, born in Syria. But perhaps that’s part of the appeal of American song: it is the product of a still-young nation, a place in constant flux. Perhaps the creation of a certain style, a signature sound, is one of the ways it finds its feet and makes its own history. Either way, Bedouine has distilled that sound into its simplest and most powerful parts. Her album is, for want of a better word, classic.
UK & European Dates:
Aug 29 — Berlin, DE // Berlin Folk Festival
Sept 1 — Copenhagen, DK // DR Koncerthuset, Studie 3
Sept 3 — Utrecht, NL // EKKO
Sept 4 — Brussels, BE // Ancienne Belgique
Sept 5 — London, UK // Milton Court Concert Hall
Sept 7 — Paris, FR // La Marbrerie