THAO is returning to records after a six-year absence, announcing her new album ‘Show Me’ for release on October 30 via Kill Rock Stars.
The follow-up to 2020’s ‘Temple’ finds the critically acclaimed songwriter working without the Thao and the Get Down Stay Down name and taking greater control behind the desk. THAO self-produced the record alongside Nate Brenner, who also co-writes, and Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus, with Neko Case, The Linda Lindas, Tune-Yards and Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada appearing across the album.
The first taste comes with ‘Catch As Catch Can’, featuring Neko Case. Its restless melody and physicality grew out of images THAO found repeatedly playing through her head while writing: bodies in the ocean, a remote lighthouse and a cottage beside a violent sea.
“‘Catch as Catch Can’ is from the (hot!) image of bodies surrendering to each other in the ocean, bodies surrendering to the animal in one another,” she explains.
Bringing Case into the song carries particular significance for THAO, who describes her as one of her favourite songwriters and singers. The pair have crossed paths previously, with THAO opening for Case on several occasions, but hearing her voice on one of her own songs proved an emotional moment.
“Neko singing on a song of mine is a dream come true,” THAO says. “When I first heard her majestic voice on this song I teared up.”
Show Me’ comes from a period of considerable change. Since ‘Temple’, THAO has gone through a divorce and the loss of the home that came with it, experiences that feed into an album concerned with desire, vulnerability, sexuality and deciding what parts of the past are worth carrying forward.
It also finds her writing more explicitly about queer identity. Although THAO came out publicly several years ago, she says she had never previously written directly about sex or her queer identity. Rather than looking back from a comfortable distance, ‘Show Me’ captures those changes while they are still being worked through.
“I learned that the point of life is not to emerge unscathed, and that I don’t want to operate as I always have, masking fear as indifference,” she says. “This album is a real-time record-keeping of my life evolving into a different relationship with love and desire over the last few years.”
The six years between albums haven’t exactly been quiet. THAO has guest-hosted the ‘Song Exploder’ podcast, hosted PBS series ‘Southern Storytellers’, worked on film scores, developed a musical, acted in film and begun writing her first book for Graywolf Press.
Now the attention returns to music. THAO will follow the October 30 release of ‘Show Me’ with a run of US dates beginning at Los Angeles’ Lodge Room on November 3, before heading through San Francisco, Kingston, New York City, Providence and Brattleboro.
Go HERE for tickets.
