
Rough Trade
Soak - If I Never Know You Like This Again
Regular price £22.00 Save £-22.00Product Description
-
With
their
new
album,
If
I
Never
Know
You
Like
This
Again,
SOAK
has
finally
shaken
the
hangover
of
their
starry
debut
‘Before
We
Forgot
How
To
Dream’,
and
the
pressures
that
came
with
it,
hiding
in
the
wings
of
their
ambitious
follow
up
album,
‘Grim
Town’.
Having
come
up
through
BBC
Introducing
at
the
tender
age
of
15,
before
signing
to
Rough
Trade
Records,
as
well
as
winning
the
RTE
Choice
Music
Prize
and
The
Northern
Irish
Music
Prize,
in
addition
to
being
the
youngest
ever
Mercury
Prize
nominee,
SOAK
has
again
and
again
been
described
as
“the
voice
of
a
generation.”
Showing,
from
a
young
age,
an
intensely
artistic
awareness
of
the
poetry
of
memory,
Bridie
Monds-Watson,
aka
SOAK,
would
incessantly
photograph
and
video
everything,
documenting
and
organising
the
material
so
it
was
always
there
for
them
to
revisit.
“I
always
want
to
remember
exactly
how
I
felt
at
a
certain
moment.”
Now,
at
25,
SOAK’s
third
album,
‘If
I
Never
Know
You
Like
This
Again',
is
naturally
made
up
of
what
Bridie
intimately
calls
‘song-memories’.
Working
closely
with
Tommy
McLaughlin
(Villagers),
with
whom
Bridie
has
been
collaborating
with
since
the
age
of
15,
and
armed
with
influences
from
Pavement
to
Radiohead
to
Broken
Social
Scene,
they
wrote
most
of
the
album
together
before
recording
it
with
the
rest
of
the
band
in
Attica
Studios,
Donegal.
Throughout
the
album
SOAK
pushes
and
pulls
at
melodies,
but
never
milks
their
brilliance.
Bridie
masterfully
glides
their
vocal
melody
slightly
off-kilter
above
excitable
compressed
high
hats
and
flourishing
guitar
lines.
With
the
new
direction
of
a
grungier,
more
lo-fi
production,
the
swooning
guitars
are
given
a
contemporary
pop
edge,
reflected
in
the
rich
and
robust
musicality
of
songs
like
‘Bleach’,
‘Last
July’
and
‘Pretzel’.
There’s
a
constant
pulsating
beat
at
the
album’s
centre,
propelling
it
towards
a
kind
of
dewy
happiness,
like
the
end
credits
of
a
90s
coming-
of-age
film.
Bridie’s
lyrics
move
through
the
songs
almost
as
effortlessly
and
they
sing
them,
and
the
songs
when
read,
read
like
poetry.
With
this
album
Bridie
is,
as
the
title
suggests,
freezing
time
in
the
pursuit
of
truth:
capturing
their
life
into
existence.
In
the
world
of
‘If
I
Never
Know
You
Like
This
Again’,
a
life
is
lived
only
because
it's
remembered.
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