PALOMA Faith will release her fifth studio album, Infinite Things, on Friday the 13th of November, to be supported by a tour…but not until Autumn 2021.
Among the 26 dates will be October 3 at Harrogate Convention Centre, or “Conversion Centre” as you could call it temporarily, now that it forms part of the Harrogate Nightingale Hospital for the Covid-19 pandemic.
London singer, songwriter and actor Paloma, who announced her second pregnancy yesterday, wrote most of the songs for Infinite Things before Coronavirus stalked the world. Once sent into lockdown, however, she ripped them all up and started afresh.
She spent her enforced downtime creating, learning to engineer her own music and “just thinking about the world”. Those fruitful months taught her she had been on “a sort of conveyor belt of music and promo”, like “a rat on a wheel”, but lockdown instead gave her “the space to take stock of her frenetic career and to decide what was meaningful to her”.
Paloma, 39, has re-emerged with a new sense of her priorities, leading her to re-connect with her roots, steeped in creativity, says the one-time art student.
For Infinite Things, she worked with a small group of long-time and new collaborators: producers Patrick Wimberly and Detonate; songwriters Ed Harcourt, Starsmith and Tre Jean Marie; producer and songwriter MNEK and friendJosef Salvat, an Australian singer-songwriter.
The resulting album on the RCA Records label offers a rumination on sickness and loss and addresses how to find your way back to romance within a long-term relationship. “It’s love songs for people who are there to stay,” Paloma says. “That enduring love. Warts and all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a love song like that, actually.”
Last week, she released the video for first single Better Than This, wherein director David Wilson’s imagery places her against “a backdrop of vignettes of human error that historically continuously repeat”.
Shot in Paloma’s home manor of Hackney in a single uncut take, Wilson’s video sees her shine a light on such prevalent concerns as the climate emergency, police brutality, race and class divide and the injustices of war.
Paloma’s September 16 to October 25 tour next year will take in Yorkshire gigs at Sheffield City Hall, September 28, Harrogate Convention Centre, October 3, and Hull Bonus Arena, October 7.
Tickets go on general sale on Friday, October 2 at 10am at gigsandtours.com, ticketmaster.co.uk and palomafaith.com. Josef Salvat will be her special guest.
That new cover is hideous! Her covers used to be so good. And she’s lost faith in herself? :’-(