Following first single On And On, rising Australian star Grace Cummings has released Common Man, the second track taken from her upcoming album Ramona, which drops on 5th April via ATO Records / [PIAS]. The bluesy, Western-infused track boasts powerful vocals from Grace while grappling with her desire to be more than the common man. The accompanying visualiser is compiled of nostalgia-inducing Western film clips, curating an immaculate retro country vibe.
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Grace Cummings (Tajette O'Halloran)
Of the song, Cummings says :“This song is about being a colourful bird and never, ever wanting to be a pigeon. Somebody I used to know wrote a song called common man about working nine to five and coming home and having a cup of tea and going to bed and it made me want to have a fucking panic attack. I wish I could tell people it was about riding off into the distance on the back of a white horse with a Cowboy in Austin Texas, but it’s not.”
Ramona is a work of raw truth rendered in its most beautiful form. In a departure from the self-produced approach of her 2019 debut Refuge Cove and its 2022 follow-up Storm Queen – the Melbourne-based artist dreamed up a lavishly orchestrated sound that fully accommodates the depth and scope of her vocal prowess. With its visceral reflection on grief and self-destruction and emotional violence, Ramona brings a stunning new grandeur to Cummings’ music while refusing to soften or temper its humanity.
Also an accomplished stage actor, Cummings imbues all of Ramona with an unbridled theatricality – an element on glorious display in the album’s title track. “I wrote that at a time when I wasn’t doing well and had the sense that other people saw me as a weak little bird,” she says, the singer mining inspiration from Bob Dylan’s 1964 song To Ramona. “I didn’t want to be myself so I decided to be Ramona instead, full of intensity and melodrama. For me there’s a lot of safety in putting on a costume or a mask; sometimes it feels like the only way to express any true honesty or vulnerability.”
Cummings hopes that Ramona might provide her audience with a similar sense of relief and release. “A lot of the time the only way for me to process what’s happening in my life is to write about it,” she says. “So it’s a deeply personal record. But I hope that people come away from this album feeling like the songs were written just for them. Because they were, in a way. Watching the deeply personal evolve into something that’s shared by so many different people makes me feel less lonely in this world.”
In addition to the new song, Grace Cummings has announced a U.S. tour that kicks off in May with stops in Los Angeles, New York and more along with her debut at Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta. The dates come ahead of her EU / UK tour with labelmates King Gizzard in May.
Upcoming UK tour dates:
MAY
24th – The Lexington – London (Headline Show)
25th – Wide Awake Festival – London
Supporting King Gizzard:
26th – Olympia – Liverpool
27th – Usher Hall – Edinburgh
29th – Civic Halls – Wolverhampton
30th – Bristol Beacon – Bristol
31st – Brighton Dome – Brighton
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