Nicole Schneit aka Air Waves aka creator of two of the greatest albums of recent years, 2018’s stunning ‘Warrior’ and newest masterpiece ‘The Dance’ set for release on September 9th on Fire Records.
Recorded at Figure 8 studios in Brooklyn, NY, new album ‘The Dance’ features Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Luke Temple (backing vox, additional arrangements), Brian Betancourt (Hospitality, Sam Evian), Cass McCombs (backing vox on Alien), Rina Mushonga (backing vox), Frankie Cosmos (backing vox), Lispector (backing vox), David Christian (drums), Ethan Sass (guitar, synth), and Ben Florencio (drums).
Out today, new single ‘Wait’ is an upbeat track that explores issues with concentrating, something rooted in their childhood alongside the need to not overdo anything.
“I was envisioning this magical landscape on a beach with cowboys and flowers, and feeling at calm in this setting. The demon lover is a happy thought, someone who is a demon in a fantastical sense. As a kid I played lots of sports and I think being involved in sports is what helped me get through adolescence, so their idea seemed fitting with the song. I asked Joe Apollonio to be in the video, because his comedy videos made me happy, and were helpful getting through the dark days of the pandemic.”
The track is released alongside mesmerizing new music video directed by Becca Brooks Morrin and Charlotte Hornsby.
“We noticed the lyrics about crossing the line. That made us think about sports and racing, but we wanted to honor the upbeat movement of the song so we loosely focused on putting dancing sports into the video. We tried to include activities that lent themselves to the flowing beat of Air Waves’ music.”
‘The Dance’ has waited three years to see the light of day and it comes to us now, blinking, smiling in the widening light of 2022 feeling more needed and necessary but also more joyous than ever before. It’s both a snapshot of these songs as they were recorded but crucially, in the intervening time those songs have had additional arrangements crafted by Nicole, created remotely and virtually, with a few like-minded collaborators. The result is simultaneously Air Waves freshest, most spontaneous yet finessed album yet, heady with hooks and unforgettable melodies, gliding on deeply danceable grooves and beats – particularly on new single ‘Wait’ – always with Schneit’s innate compassion, concision and uncanny pop sense shining throughout the nine luminescent tracks.
‘The Dance’ is anything but an over-confected studio-sprawl – like all Air Waves music it’s at root beautifully simple, instantly accessible and entirely addictive. Nicole released their first independent album in 2009 under the Air Waves moniker, a name inspired by a Guided By Voices song – subsequent albums like 2010’s ‘Dungeon Dots’ (which featured a guest vocal from fellow Brooklynite Sharon Van Etten), 2015’s ‘Parting Glances’ and 2017’s stunning ‘Warrior’ crystallised Schneit’s vision of loose-but-focused, convivial but startling pop. The new album continues that trajectory but finds Schneit opening up their music to a more fluid sense of space and movement, while keeping their lyrical eye between the personal and the political, from the specific to the universal with a haiku-like directness and suggestion.
You won’t find a better soundtrack for the solidarity, strength, romance and movement we all need right now than ‘The Dance’ – Air Waves’ best album yet and recommendations come no higher. Shall we?
