Lael Neale has shared Slip Away, the first single from her new album As Killers Do, due November 20th. The song comes with a stop-motion video built from Neale’s own black-and-white paintings, appearing and dissolving line by line. The album is the first release on her new label, Consensual Sound, and follows Altogether Stranger, her third for Sub Pop, released last May.
Slip Away is a throbbing garage rock number about impermanence — Guy Blakeslee‘s psychedelic guitar over Neale’s Omnichord, drum machine built in. It’s their fourth album together, recorded on a Tascam cassette 8-track in the kitchen of a bungalow in Echo Park. The record runs ten songs in under half an hour, mixing girl-group sha-la-las with proto-punk and outsider folk.
On Slip Away‘s theme of impermanence, Neale offers:
“We act as little gods. Assuming great import. All that we build, create, collect and become, to be taken away. We are not gods. The only consolation I have in a world of megalomaniac billionaires and sociopathic leaders. They all will die. We all will die. The Earth will go on.”
Neale has also written about what drove the album as a whole, and what’s pulled her away from the usual promotional grind:
“What’s real is becoming much harder to discern day to day. And for that reason, I hunger for it more strongly. I used to long for more followers, higher streaming numbers, more sales, but in the light of recent revelations concerning falsification of numbers, I am much less interested in it. I make music and paintings because it’s what I do. Because I go crazy inside my own mind when I’m not making things. And it’s peak fulfillment when the things I make to help myself work to help someone else.”
Consensual Sound takes its name from her Substack. Vinyl is capped at 500 copies. Each cover is handmade. Neale sells most of them herself, at shows. She’s also started selling her paintings at the merch table — records are heavy to lug around, paintings less so. She still doesn’t own a smartphone.
She tours through September, including a Green Man Festival slot and a run of UK psych fests.
Tour Dates
15 Aug — La Route Du Rock, St Malo
17 Aug — Petit Bain, Paris
18 Aug — Village Underground (w/ Nation of Language), London
21 Aug — Outside Devon, Bantham
23 Aug — Green Man Festival, Brecon Beacons
28 Aug — Pop-Kultur Festival, Berlin
31 Aug — Whelan’s (w/ Allah Las), Dublin
1 Sep — Ulster Sports Club (w/ Allah Las), Belfast
2 Sep — Clwb Ifor Bach (w/ Allah Las), Cardiff
4 Sep — Brighton Psych Fest
5 Sep — Manchester Psych Fest
6 Sep — Edinburgh Psych Fest
18 Sep — Sony Hall (w/ Luna), New York City
19 Sep — Crossroads (w/ Luna), Garwood, NJ
20 Sep — Ottobar (w/ Luna), Baltimore
Pre-order/stream: https://found.ee/LaelNeale_SlipAway