Today, the band are returning to announce their second LP Leave The Light On, which is due out April 1st on Royal Mountain Records, and sharing the first single from the new album, a track called “Be By Your Side”.
Dublin’s Pillow Queens had been quietly building momentum on their side of the Atlantic since the release of their 2017 debut EP Calm Girls. Selling out shows here in Ireland, supporting artists like IDLES, Pussy Riot and Future Islands, and earning enthusiastic support in the UK before they independently released their 2020 LP In Waiting.
The album was a major breakthrough for the band, earning them praise from outlets like The Guardian, who called them “2020’s most exciting indie rockers,” NPR, NME, The Irish Times, and The Line of Best Fit, a Band To Watch feature from Stereogum, a Choice Prize Album of The Year nomination, and most remarkably of all a US national television appearance on the Late Late Show w/ James Corden.
“This song is about the mechanisms that are used to hide your vulnerabilities and carry on,” explains singer/bassist Pamela Connolly. “But also, the feeling of being about to burst and how cathartic it could be to allow yourself to let your emotions out and feel the world around you. This was one of the first songs we finished on the album as it was the quickest to become fully realized by all of us.”
The album announcement coincides with the announcement of the band’s first North American tour, which will include a stop at SXSW before the band return to the UK in May and their native Ireland in October. Full details can be found below.
When Pillow Queens set about recording their second album, before, after and during, great spaces were opening. The pauses in living and connection were profound. And so, they went two places: within, and towards each other.
Leave the Light On is an exploration of the uncertainty of emotions as they are in process, and an intuitive outpouring of ideas as they form. It’s about being intimately honest with yourself, and as a band. It’s about trusting that this state of vulnerability can be held as it emerges, by you, by us.
What do queer dream blues sound like? More importantly, what do they feel like? Leaving home at night, driving through the black back roads until the tungsten light starts to glow. “Uaigneas an chaldaigh”, the Irish sense of loneliness experienced on the shore. The confusion and discombobulation of waking and feeling unfamiliar. The liminal space between dreaming and being conscious. The unmooring that happens when a sense of self is being explored and sometimes slipping away.
But gravitating towards the unknown and the ambiguous can often yield the kinds of sounds and feelings that provide creative certainty, where the art is coming to you, as much as you going to it. Leave the Light On fills vast new sonic plains for Pillow Queens. It’s an album that encourages duality; to be soft and hard, delicate, and muscular, intimate and anthemic, alone and together. Collaborating on lyrics, a shared emotional experience fills these songs of hope and home, insecurity and estrangement, songs that track time passing and a sense of reflection grows deeper every day.
When real movement is stillness, when to be stationary feels transitionary, and when the most vital journey in life is to go within, then it’s time to leave the light on, and open up.
Leave The Light On is due out April 1st on Royal Mountain Records
Tour Dates
March 9th – Kilkenny, Ireland @ Set Theatre (Sold out)
March 10th – Galway, Ireland @ Roisin Dubh (Sold out)
March 11th – Dublin, Ireland @ Button Factory (Sold out)
March 12th – Dublin, Ireland @ Button Factory (Sold out)
March 14th-19th – SXSW
March 23rd – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room
March 24th – Los Angeles, CA @ Moroccan Lounge
March 25th – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel SF
March 27th – Seattle, WA @ Clock-out Lounge
March 29th – Vancouver, BC @ Wise Hall
March 30th – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
April 1st – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
April 2nd – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
April 4th – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown Jr.
April 6th – Saint Paul, MN @ Turf Club
April 7th – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
April 9th – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern
April 11th – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
April 12th – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
April 14th – New York, NY @ The Mercury Lounge
April 15th – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
May 3rd – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
May 5th – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
May 6th – Glasgow, Scotland @ Stereo
May 7th – Newcastle, UK @ Cluny
May 10th – Brighton, UK @ Chalk
May 11th – London, UK @ Scala
May 12th – Birmingham, UK @ The Castle and Falcon
May 13th – Bristol, UK @ Thekla
June 12th Berlin, Germany @ Tempelhof Festival
July 2nd – Gdynia, Poland @ Open’er Festival
October 1st – Dublin @ Vicar St.
October 2nd – Dublin @ Vicar St.
October 7th – Limerick @ Dolan’s
October 8th – Cork @ Cyprus Avenue
October 14th – Belfast @ The Empire
October 15th – Galway @ The Roisin Dubh
October 16th – Galway @ The Roisin Dubh
October 20th – Kilkenny @ The Set Theatre
Photo: Rich Gilligan
