“Folding Chairs” is the new single from Melbourne singer-songwriter BATTS, taken from her forthcoming debut album The Grand Tour, due in April, the single is stripped back, contemplative and utterly beautiful.
The track is gently delivered and places BATTS’ delicate and emotive vocals front and centre. It brings to mind, or mine at least, Laura Marling’s debut. It’s really beautiful stuff. Recorded and mixed by Tanya Batt herself, the single explores the journeys we take to improve ourselves, both physically and mentally.
Talking about the track BATTS explains that “Folding Chairs” is “a song that reflects on self-improvement and all the methods you try to help with that. How some help, and some don’t, but essentially you always feel like you have more to do and more to learn and how that in itself is exhausting.”
BATTS is also a massive lover of all thing intergalactic, with her debut album The Grand Tour conceptually influenced by the journey of the Voyager 1 spacecraft into interstellar space. When Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in 2012 it sent back a shock of radio and plasma wave signals which were converted into sound. With the official Voyager samples from NASA and Don Gurnett at the University of Iowa, BATTS has carefully placed these samples from Voyager 1’s journey in chronological order, throughout the album. I could be wrong, but if you listen closely to “Folding Chairs”, I reckon you can get an aural tease of Voyager 1’s journey through space.
The Grand Tour will not just take listeners on a journey through the lives of fictional characters and personal experiences then, but also on Voyager’s journey through space. It sounds like a really cool and interesting project, and I for one can’t wait to hear the rest of the album.
“Folding Chairs” is available now. The Grand Tour is available April 12th through THAA Records, you can preorder the album HERE. BATTS will be supporting Sharon Van Etten on her Australian tour later this year, dates below. You can find BATTS on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
BATTS Australian Tour Dates w/ Sharon Van Etten
June 7th: QPAC – Brisbane, QLD | Tickets
June 11th: Hamer Hall – Melbourne, VIC | Tickets
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