Now two decades into her career, with seven studio albums and numerous accolades to her name, Nerina Pallot returns to deliver her latest warm and wistful single ‘Oh Berlin’ on June 26th through Ingrooves.
Following on from her heartfelt rendition of the Joy Division classic ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, which featured on the soundtrack to the hit BBC/RTE TV series Normal People, and ‘Circus’, which appeared on Amazon’s Modern Love, ‘Oh Berlin’ sees the singer and songwriter in a far more humbled and stripped-back guise.
Opening up with a smooth and soaring piano-led introduction, the track slowly rises to a dramatic crescendo that almost sees her mirror a trip-hop-inspired direction. With her sweeping vocals grounding the song throughout, this new release showcases more of that subtle beauty she lends to everything she creates.
Speaking about her latest offering, she said, “There is nothing like a bitterly cold, rainy day in Berlin to make you ponder the meaning of your life, especially if this existential moment is taking place on stage in the middle of a gig in the German capital, wishing you had written more bangers and had a show with dancers and roller skates and at least three costume changes. And why did the Gods of Song forget you when bops were being handed out and gave you melancholy instead? Still, what’s that Oscar Wilde saying – ‘be yourself, everybody else is already taken’? It can take us a while to figure that out for ourselves, and some of us don’t need to go to Berlin to do it, but I did and Oh Berlin is the result.”
Discovered while working as a publishing assistant at Mute Records, Nerina Pallot signed to Polydor Records and released her first album in 2001. The release of her critically acclaimed second album ‘Fires’ in 2006 drew comparisons with Joni Mitchell, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, and spawned hit singles ‘Everybody’s Gone To War’ and ‘Sophia’, not to mention Brit Award and Ivor Novello nominations.
While building a faithful live following, subsequent albums have seen her follow her creative muse wherever it takes her, from the chamber pop of 2009’s ‘The Graduate’, via the Bernard Butler produced retro colourings of ‘Year of the Wolf’ in 2011 to the electronica heavy ‘The Sound and the Fury’. Pallot’s most recent album ‘Stay Lucky’ finds her trademark songwriting exploring the human heart in all its fragility set amongst lush orchestration and the multi instrumentalist’s peerless musicianship.
Now two decades into her career, Pallot’s rich and varied back catalogue suggests an artist determined on carving her own path. Currently working on her seventh album, she has recently lent her distinctive vocals to songs like Circus from Amazon’s Modern Love and her version of Love Will Tear Us Apart on BBC/RTE’s Normal People.
