Nerina Pallot unveils the captivating live video for her latest single 'Cold Places'

NEW ALBUM ‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING’, OUT JUNE 17TH

PRE-ORDER HERE

UK TOUR ANNOUNCED FOR OCTOBER 2022

With her highly-anticipated seventh studio album ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’ set to arrive on June 17th through Idaho Records / InGrooves, the enigmatic Nerina Pallot has now delivered the captivating live video for the record's opening single ‘Cold Places’, recently described by The Sunday Times as "Beautifully orchestrated by Sally Herbert, the Jersey singer's new track combines lush pastoralia, a characteristically serpentine melody and lyrics imbued with yearning and defiance."

The new visuals for ‘Cold Places’ look to emulate the warm and homely atmosphere in which the song was conceived. Backed with a full line-up of fellow musicians, the video aims to highlight the raw and acoustic origins of the single, stripping back the larger production in exchange for its more organic roots.

Speaking about the video, Nerina said, "One of the benefits of making music with the same group of musicians for a while is that it’s easy to sit down and play new songs live, even if the recorded versions are big orchestral productions. This version of Cold Places is very close to how the song first came into being and it was fun to get back to a more immediate, stripped back approach literally around a fire. It’s really important to me that any song I write can work live acoustically like this; then I know it can withstand whatever I throw at in the production process."

Performance Credits:

Lewis Wright: drums

Alex Bonfanti : bass

Carlos Garcia: guitar

Tommy Reynolds: director

Andy Chatterley: Synthesiser

Andy Hughes: sound engineer

Some art comes to its creator like a crack of thunder: a strike of inspiration out of the blue. Other projects require nurturing; they need to be coaxed out of their hiding places like shy creatures. In the case of Nerina Pallot’s magnificent seventh album ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’, it turned out to be a case of the latter. This record is the product of more than three years of songwriting and studio sessions, resulting in what is undoubtedly one of her finest works to date. It is filled with memories of childhood, strange tales of fate and coincidence, and beautifully realised reflections of self. It’s about making mistakes, learning from them, and celebrating life for as long as we have breath in our bodies.

Nerina also recently announced a UK tour taking place in October. Tickets on sale now.

Full rundown of dates below:

08th - Cambridge - Storeys Field

09th - Norwich - Epic Studios

10th - Brighton - Komedia Studio Bar

12th - Guildford - Boileroom

13th - London - Lafayette

14th - Manchester - Gorilla

16th - Birmingham - Glee Club

17th - Bath - Komedia

19th - Glasgow - St Lukes

20th - Gateshead -Sage 2

21st - York - NCEM

‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’ Tracklist:

Cold Places

Alice At The Beach

Master Builder

There's a River

Born

I Don't Know What I'm Doing

The Way We Are

Mama

Only The Old Songs

Australia

Don't Dare (Love Is Hell)

Fun

“I’m really happy to be here,” she says, beaming. “For the first part of my career I was constantly being compared to people who were bigger than me at the time. Now? I don’t care! I don’t fucking care! What do I have to lose by standing up for myself?”

Album track “Born”, is a gorgeously understated song about remembering to value the people in your life. “We all make a mess of living/ We all try to carry on,” she sings. “We try to make the best of it until the day we’re done./ We’ve all got a hurt we’re hiding/ We’ve all got someone we mourn.”

“Born” is followed on I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by the title track, possibly the kind of song Bob Dylan was trying to make when he wrote his ill-fated 1986 album, Knocked Out Loaded. She sings in a weathered but hopeful, lilting cadence: “Just leaving my bed is something these days.” The acoustic guitar meanders sweetly with no clear direction, gathering steam as Pallot’s conviction grows: “In the no-fucking-clue club, you’ll never be wrong.” It’s her reminder to stop judging herself by other people’s successes, or the artists she’s been compared to in the past. “I think because I’m always aiming for something beyond me, there’s always that fate that I’m never quite getting there,” she admits. “But I love the challenge, and I don’t think I’ll ever get bored. I think I’ll be 70 and still trying to write my ‘Hounds of Love’.”

Regardless of the favourable comparisons Pallot earns over the course of her career, she remains brilliantly and defiantly unique. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is her outstanding cover “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division, featured in the BBC’s universally acclaimed adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Pallot’s version opens on a stark piano rendition of that instantly recognisable melody; her voice lands with a kind of fatalistic, angry resignation, the very essence of going up in flames. “When I first started playing that song, it was almost like a fuck-you to my ex-boyfriend,” Pallot says. “It didn’t end well. I don’t think I’ve ever been that sad and angry at the end of any other relationship, and that song was the only one that made me feel OK.” All these years later, she sings it the exact same way: “It’s almost like it’s my own song – I stopped singing it like a cover, because it was articulating everything I felt at the time.”

Contrast this with album closer “Fun”, a playfully theatrical tribute to Pallot’s husband, Jersey-born record producer and songwriter Andy Chatterley. Family gets another look-in on “Mama”, influenced by her mother’s favourite artist, British icon Elkie Brooks. The track is saturated in the classic soul sound of the Sixties and Seventies, with a chorus redolent of Dee Dee Warwick’s “You’re No Good”. Through fraught times, Pallot took refuge in her music and now, listeners can find solace in it, too.

‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’ will be available on Digital, CD, vinyl, and cassette upon its release from all good music stores and platforms and available to pre-order from her official web store HERE

DISCOVER NERINA PALLOT

lorraine longApril 25, 2022