Jenn Champion has announced Single Rider, her first full-length release since abandoning the “S” moniker and radically re-imagining her sound. The record – crafted in close collaboration with producer Brian Fennell aka SYML – drops on Friday, July 13th on Hardly Art.
On Single Rider, Champion brings with her all those skills and vulnerabilities, but it is not a record for wallowing: it is a record for intense eye contact on the dancefloor. “Sometimes you are sad and you just want to dance about it,” said Champion.
Side B of Cool Choices presaged Champion’s agit-pop transformation. “Let the Light In” and “Tell Me” signaled her move toward a more electronic sound, but it was the digital single “No One” (2016) that marked the clear delineation. “I feel like a door got opened in my mind with electronic and digital music. There was a room I hadn’t explored before and I stepped in,” said Champion. While she’d initially intended to follow Cool Choices with “a rock record – guitar, a lot of pedals, heavy riffs,” plans changed. “I couldn’t pull myself away from the synthesizers and I realized the record I really wanted to make was more of a cross between Drake and Billy Joel than Blue Oyster Cult.”
Soon after the release of “No One”, Champion’s publishers partnered her with Brian Fennell, aka SYML, and the two co-wrote the song “Leave Like That” (featured on SYML’s Hurt For Me EP). The pair hit it off, and with nearly all of Champion’s Single Rider demos completed, the timing was perfect–she was looking for a producer. “I guess you could say I pursued Brian.” Fortunately, Fennell was open to being pursued and the two spent the next five months working on Single Rider. “In the studio with Brian, I was more open than I had ever been.” With Champion’s vision and Fennell’s expertise, the record evolved from synthy roughs to a hi-fi dance album.
“Time to Regulate” is the second sampling of Single Rider and you can listen to it below:
Single Rider artwork & tracklist:
01. O.M.G. (I’m All Over It)
02. Coming For You
03. You Knew
04. Holding On
05. The Move
06. Never Giving In
07. Mainline
08. Time to Regulate
09. Bleed
10. Hustle
11. Going Nowhere
TOUR DATES
08.09.18 – Seattle, WA – Chop Suey
08.10.18 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
08.16.18 – Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg Theater