Amber Arcades has announced her third album Barefoot On Diamond Road, her first for Fire Records. It’s a hand-in-glove fit for the dream pop stylings of Annelotte de Graaf, sharing a roster with acts such as Virginia Wing and Jane Weaver. That being said, Barefoot On Diamond Road marks a significant sonic departure from previous album European Heartbreak, which was adorned with the soul-laced productions of the Spacebomb-crew.
New single “Just Like Me” shows Amber Arcades at its most monochrome, applying chopped up, static synth ripples that give the song a sense of unease, like shifting sand currents beneath her feet. That tenuous energy was something she harnessed within the track’s origins.
“I wrote this song when I had just moved to Amsterdam,” De Graaf says. “It was a sequence of extremes; we lived dead centre, at first we couldn’t go out of the house without being in a huge crowd of people, then overnight it felt like an apocalyptic ghost town. The song is about the tension between togetherness and being alone that comes with living in an urban environment. The need for both but then often not being quite satisfied with either.”
For Barefoot On Diamond Road De Graaf worked with recurring collaborator Ben Greenberg. This time around, she also enlisted the talents of Pearl Jam/ Soundgarden drummer Matt Chamberlain to add a more propulsive elements to the songs. The album will be out February 10 2023, and you can preorder it here.
Listen to “Just Like Me” below and find it on streaming outlets.
