Description
Everything felt different," says Joana Serrat. Big Wave, the sixth full-length release from the Catalan singer-songwriter, strides boldly in a new direction, its songs charged with a fresh power -- precipitated by changes in her personal life.
On her previous albums, particularly Hardcore From The Heart and Dripping Springs, Joana's music engages in a tug-of-war between fragility and intensity, a dynamic that has caught the attention of major publications such as Mojo, Uncut, and The Guardian, as well as Lauren Laverne, Guy Garvey and Gideon Coe on their BBC 6 Music show. Her songs have been described as "torrents of familiar heartache made startling and luminous".
Big Wave retains her characteristic use of reverb and pop melody, but is tighter, fiercer, shrouded in distortion. An emotional and sonic ferocity because "I wanted to be more aggressive," Joana explains. "Because I was going through a period where I was feeling very uncomfortable."
Big Wave was recorded at The Echo Lab studio over two weeks in April 2022, in Texas, familiar territory geographically -- she made her previous two albums there -- but with a new producer and mixer on board: Matt Pence (Jason Isbell, John Grant). His fresh outlook led to fresh ways of working -- like starting with a cappella demos, to which he added drums, and then a harmoniser, instruments that supply the album with much of its force. Also on board was co-producer and longtime collaborator Joey McClellan (Midlake, Rufus Wainwright, John Grant), McKenzie Smith (St Vincent, Sharon Van Etten) and several of Joana's Midlake and Mercury Rev friends.
That collective spirit and spontaneity shaped the album. It was during one of the first songs they recorded "Feathers", that the idea of using a bass moog came about via Scott Lee (The Texas Gentlemen, Kirby Brown, Josh T Pearson). "I thought, that's the direction of the album. That was a moment of enlightenment," recalls Joana.
"A Dream That Can Last" features a single acoustic guitar that, thanks to the harmoniser, sounds like an entire orchestra. And on the Bjork-like ballad This House -- written about the house where Joana currently lives, in a small village in the mountains of Northern Catalonia -- Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev, Midlake, Beth Orton) used the harmoniser on the sounds of strings of an open piano to create a song that holds you tight in its grip: "You feel like the house is actually burning."
Her own teenage odysseys into the reverb-heavy 1990s sounds of indie-rock, dream-pop and noise-rock are particularly felt on the second half of Big Wave, which contains more "classic Joana stuff". But the contemporary, experimental elements that dominate side A emerge from elsewhere: the sonic and lyrical content of Low's Hey What, and the deep, dark textures of Oneohtrix Point Never.
