JFDR – the project from prolific Icelandic songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jófríður Ákadóttir (Samaris, Pascal Pinon, Gangly) – today announces the release of her second album New Dreams, out on 13th March 2020 on White Sun Recording.
To mark the album announce JFDR has shared new single ‘My Work’, the second track to be taken from the album following the release of ‘Taking a Part of Me’ in October.
“’ My Work’ marks a somewhat transitional moment, where I was pushing myself to my limits, traveling constantly, running away from my home, from my demons,” explains JFDR. “I had been working on these chords for a little bit, I was smoking a cigarette in my friend Aaron’s loft in Brooklyn, I had spent a few weeks there and it was getting colder. I remember a very beautiful loneliness; I was excited to be there, but it was all foreign to me. And I was looking out the window and thinking about death, the cigarette triggered this I guess, but I had also been thinking about naivety and innocence and glorifying something I was (or thought I was) before I experienced sadness and loneliness in the adult way.
I was thinking about my mother, how a mother can only be as happy as her saddest child, and I felt sorry, I felt how that was sadder than me being sad. The song reminds me of those moments I was living at the loft, in all weathers, on the stairway looking at the city in the distance, on the roof, in Aaron’s room, in my room, in the evening or night time, smoking, existing, wondering what I was doing there, processing this magical yet heart-wrenching lack of belonging, was it what I wanted?”
Jófríður Ákadóttir has made eight albums in the eight years since she was 15. Her debut album as JFDR was the acclaimed 2017 Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Yoko Ono, etc.) produced album Brazil.
New Dreams deals variously in heartbreak, gratitude, habits, intuition, delusions, innocence, loneliness, meaning, empathy, vulnerability, security, identity, dependency, longing, beauty, love (which, as mentioned, has a way of balancing the scales) and, yes, dreams, old and new.
“This record is more thought out,” she says. “The person who’s singing is more honest, not as ‘coated’ or ‘poetic’ as in Brazil. It’s less eloquent, perhaps, but more what’s happening for me right now. The meaning isn’t always revealed to me until afterward.”
The production from Jófríður – with Josh Wilkinson and mixing from Paul Corley (Sigur Rós, Yves Tumour, Tim Hecker) – is deftly balanced between singer-songwriter verité and spectral electronics. The textures are open and loose; the gossamer nature of her performance tethered to the more robust architecture of the music. Frequently it’s what isn’t there that matters more than what is. New Dreams is a record filled with light and space.
New Dreams tracklist:
1. Care for You
2. Taking a Part of Me
3. Think Too Fast
4. My Work
5. Gravity
6. Juno
7. Dive In
8. Falls (No Wonder)
9. Shimmer
10. I Wish I’d See The Way You See Me
11. Drifter
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