Halifax-hailing musician Alana Yorke has announced her forthcoming sophomore album, led by the new single "Marion."
Destroyer is set to arrive May 17 via Paper Bag Records. Co-produced by Ian Bent, it's the follow-up to Yorke's 2015 debut album, Dream Magic, and was recorded with a 21-piece string orchestra.
The singer-songwriter traces the genesis of Destroyer back to November 2022, when she suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. The health scare somehow managed to lift the psychological heaviness Yorke had been coping with for the last decade, having developed PTSD after running out of air during a sample-gathering scuba expedition for her academic work.
"The goal was to bring these images and stories back to our world," the artist explained of the newfound urgency and euphoric creativity that followed.
Of the cinematic head-rush of "Marion," she added:
After my grandmother's passing I was looking through old family photo albums, and the deep brown eyes of my grandmother really spoke to me, but also the 'green and gold' hazel eyes of myself as a young toddler. Eyes became a link between generations, what we share in ways that are difficult to understand, and how a loved one can continue to live on through us. The intensity of the music and the vocal is an expression of the grief I was feeling. When we produced this song, we created so many beats, tracked drum parts, edited them, and later in the process we ended up peeling almost everything back to reveal the vocal and piano. When the strings were tracked, the new arrangement made sense, and had a new power that was more confident than expected.
Watch the accompanying music video, featuring Yorke's expressionist-inspired choreographed movement in Nova Scotia's Indian Harbour, below.
Destroyer:
1. Tidal Wave
2. All the Flowers
3. Into the Night
4. Marion
5. Preludium
6. Léa
7. IRL
8. Sound
9. Let Me Go
10. Too Hard
Pre-order Destroyer.
Destroyer is set to arrive May 17 via Paper Bag Records. Co-produced by Ian Bent, it's the follow-up to Yorke's 2015 debut album, Dream Magic, and was recorded with a 21-piece string orchestra.
The singer-songwriter traces the genesis of Destroyer back to November 2022, when she suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. The health scare somehow managed to lift the psychological heaviness Yorke had been coping with for the last decade, having developed PTSD after running out of air during a sample-gathering scuba expedition for her academic work.
"The goal was to bring these images and stories back to our world," the artist explained of the newfound urgency and euphoric creativity that followed.
Of the cinematic head-rush of "Marion," she added:
After my grandmother's passing I was looking through old family photo albums, and the deep brown eyes of my grandmother really spoke to me, but also the 'green and gold' hazel eyes of myself as a young toddler. Eyes became a link between generations, what we share in ways that are difficult to understand, and how a loved one can continue to live on through us. The intensity of the music and the vocal is an expression of the grief I was feeling. When we produced this song, we created so many beats, tracked drum parts, edited them, and later in the process we ended up peeling almost everything back to reveal the vocal and piano. When the strings were tracked, the new arrangement made sense, and had a new power that was more confident than expected.
Watch the accompanying music video, featuring Yorke's expressionist-inspired choreographed movement in Nova Scotia's Indian Harbour, below.
Destroyer:
1. Tidal Wave
2. All the Flowers
3. Into the Night
4. Marion
5. Preludium
6. Léa
7. IRL
8. Sound
9. Let Me Go
10. Too Hard
Pre-order Destroyer.