New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Austra - a.k.a. musician, producer, songwriter and performer Katie Austra Stelmanis - will release her fourth album HiRUDiN on May 1st via Domino, and today she shares the third single off of the forthcoming release. Oddball pop masterpiece "Mountain Baby" follows previous tracks "Risk It" and "Anywayz," and features Montreal's Cecile Believe (the "voice" and co-writer on SOPHIE's Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides), as well as a children's choir from
Wilkinson Public School in Toronto, where Stelmanis' mother is a teacher. The dichotomy of the choir and Cecile's vocals reflect the song's intentions.
Austra explains further: "Mountain Baby explores the different stages of a breakup. Surrounded by a feeling of unknown and grounded only by a hidden sense to move forward (the choir), we're also reminded through flashbacks of both the uncertainty and resistance we experienced in the relationship (katie), as well as the pure, unbridled joy (cecile)."
Austra's May 2020 tour dates have been postponed to the same or an alternative venue, with the exception of London, Paris, and Madrid, which have been cancelled. New dates have been added for those cities (listed below). In addition, a fully expanded tour will be announced and on sale next month.
While Austra's third album, 2017's
Future Politics, was concerned with the external power structures that shape society, HiRUDiN points inward, tracing a deeply personal journey towards regeneration, dealing with the fallout of toxic relationships, queer shame, and insecurity along the way. Named after the peptide released by leeches that is the most potent anticoagulant in the world, HiRUDiN is about the importance of healing the self, letting go of harmful influences, and finding the power to rebuild. Working between London, Spain and Toronto in early 2018, Stelmanis, who has been the sole producer for Austra in the past, was joined by co-producers Rodaidh McDonald and Joseph Shabason for the first time. The resulting album reaps the rewards of Austra's leap into the unknown, in her most introspective yet inventive statement to date.
HiRUDiN is available to pre-order on Mart-exclusive LP (signed 'moss' colored vinyl with fold out poster), deluxe LP, standard LP, CD and digitally.
