Photographer Credit: Catherine Mamani Valles
TUVABAND
Shares tender new s
Growing Pains & Pleasures out 21st May
via own label Passion Flames/Sub Pop Publishing
ingle ‘Fully Mature Things’
Praise for Tuvaband:
“There is a wonderfully haunting tone to Marschhäuser’s vocal, akin to Karen Sheridan of Irish collaborative Slow Skies, and the use of repetitive lyrics and extensive reverb generates a feeling of torment that is difficult to shake off.” – The Line Of Best Fit
“A sweeping, atmospheric seascape” – DORK
Releasing the haunting ‘Post Isolation’ in March with John Carpenter inspired video, today Norway’s Tuvaband shares a tender shoegaze new single ‘Fully Mature Things’. Both tracks are taken from her new album Growing Pains & Pleasures out on 21st May via her own label Passion Flames in EU/UK, as well as Sub Pop Publishing in the US.
Change sits at the heart of Tuvaband’s new album, Growing Pains & Pleasures, the record is a journey through the ups and downs of leaving your past self behind you. But whereas some songs deal with the darkness of that process, her new single ‘Fully Mature Things’ is the breakthrough – the moment of catharsis when you realise that life demands you move, and stepping forward is the only way to go.
‘Fully Mature Things’ has a stormy kind of quality to it, with the guitars thundering in its air, and the song’s rhythm rushing and crashing like a rolling wave. Tuva draws that energy into her, and grows in confidence and presence as she steps into her realisation and decision – to leave her old self behind and embrace the transformation, because standing still leads to stagnation.
“This song is about letting go”, says Tuva. “It’s about accepting changes and letting go of the past to make space for the new, as a result of realising that fully mature things rot. The song covers everything from old and ingrained patterns of behaviour and thoughts, both on a personal level and in a society’s social structure. This song might actually be my favourite song on the album. It definitely has my favourite drums; I think they’re funny and weird. When I programmed the drums, I tried to make a normal drum fill, but didn’t have much experience. In the end, the drummer, Kenneth Ishak, copied my “failed” attempt at doing the fills because it somehow sounded new and fresh, like something I hadn’t heard before”.
The solo project of Norwegian singer, songwriter, and producer, Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser, she has proven herself as a master of crafting songs that capture a special atmosphere in her sound. Tuvaband’s debut album Soft Drop saw her write songs that were airy, ghostly and effortlessly cinematic, while its follow-up I Entered The Void (which earned a nomination for a Norwegian Grammy) pushed her sound into rougher, heavier atmospheric rock.
Growing Pains & Pleasures is about trying to find her way back. It’s an album fuelled by change – changes in Tuva’s life, changes happening around her, and changes she realised she was going through herself. The album’s title, Growing Pains & Pleasures, describes her journey through those changes, the stress of the ground moving underneath your feet and the world shaking as you realise you’re not the same person you always were.
Tuvaband has a vision and is clearly not afraid to use it.
Growing Pains & Pleasures, the new album from Tuvaband
Friday 21st May via Passion Flames.
Pre-save the album HERE
Tracklisting: Growing Pains and Pleasures
Out 21st May 2021
1. Growing Pains
2. Fully Mature Things
3. Post Isolation
4. I Think
5. Doomsday
6. Annie Blackburn
7. When I Came Out
8. I’ll Look Elsewhere Now
9. Irreversible
10. Blue Vein
11. Serotonin
12. Be Fine
About Growing Pains & Pleasures:
With Tuvaband’s new album Growing Pains & Pleasures, she’s set to take her songwriting to new levels and adventurously push the boundaries of her musical world.
The story of Growing Pains & Pleasures starts in Venice, where Tuva spent a week working in early 2019. In a cavernous house, in the shadows of its tall dark rooms, she began to work on the lyrics for her new songs. Finding herself in the murky, silent house, it became sort of a parallel world for the journeys she was taking into the shadowy spaces of her own mind in her lyrics.
“When you’re in isolation you don’t meet many people”, she says, “and there are few impressions from the outside world. So coming out of isolation can be an overwhelming experience – in ways both good and bad. A lot of the songs have feelings of fear; an irrational and vague, but constant fear”.
It’s an album fuelled by change – changes in Tuva’s life, changes happening around her, and changes she realised she was going through herself. The album’s title, Growing Pains & Pleasures describes her journey through those changes, the stress of the ground moving underneath your feet and the world shaking as you realise you’re not the same person you always were.
“I always thought that you stop changing and developing when you become an adult”, she says. “But it was in my late twenties that I started changing the most. A friend once said ‘Tuva, you seem so self-assured. You always know what you’re doing and what you want’. I Thought that was true – until everything changed. At the start, I rejected the change. After a while I realised that I had to accept it. I’ve realised that fully mature things rot”.
The writing and production on the album is all Tuva’s own, and the music started with her in the studio, crafting intricate demo versions of each song. I Entered The Void had been a tough-sounding album – on Growing Pains & Pleasures she decided to take a step back from the heaviness in that sound. “People always said my music was cute, which almost offended me, because especially if you look at the lyrics, it wasn’t. So I wanted I Entered The Void to be tough, rough and edgy. Now, I feel I no longer have to convince everyone that my music is tough”.
With less of an ideological manifesto steering the sound, she could focus on the songwriting, and on this album, it’s some of her strongest yet, a rich, detailed sound that pulls the best elements of her style to-date, and is a perfect playground for her magical vocals.
