Malmö, Sweden shoegaze/dreampop trio ECHO LADIES are pleased to announce they have signed to Rama Lama Records/Gazehop Records and will release their second album Lillies on 8th September 2023.
To celebrate the news, the band are streaming new single ‘Awake’ which will be released on all good streaming services on 1st June 2023.
Commenting on the track, the band say: “‘Awake’ is a song about the feeling of drifting apart from each other in a relationship. The feeling of being left behind and forgotten and how small of a person that makes you feel, hoping it’s all a bad dream and wishing to wake up again.”
Echo Ladies are Matilda Bogren, Mattis Andersson and Joar Andersén—three school-friends who, after playing together in a few different bands, realised that they worked best on their own. In 2014, after looking for “a name that represented our sound”, they became Echo Ladies, partly inspired by the name of the drum machine from another of their favourite bands, Echo & The Bunnymen (though their own drum machine, for now, remains nameless).
Following a quiet spell for the band while the rest of the world turned upside down, Echo Ladies are now proudly returning with their second album Lillies, recorded and mastered by Joakim Lindberg at Studio Sickan in Malmö, and following on from their acclaimed 2018 debut Pink Noise on Sonic Cathedral, which was one of Rough Trade’s albums of the year.
With the luxury of developing the music over several years, Lillies is built on the same foundation that Echo Ladies laid during their past releases, but with a more unyielding presence—though you still find clear inspiration from shoegaze greats Jesus and the Mary Chain, A Place To Bury Strangers, Slowdive, and many more.
Echo Ladies have always tried to balance juxtaposing emotions on their songs, but commenting on the new album they say: “While our past material conveyed feelings of nostalgia and hope for the future mixed with worries and anxieties about defining who you are and what you will become, Lillies instead tries to balance the emotions of sorrow and loneliness, with anger, frustration, and the determination to make a change for the better. This album really carries the Echo Ladies mantra that ‘Nothing Ever Lasts’—good things can come to an end, but bad things will also pass.”
Debut album Pink Noise was Bandcamp’s Album of The Day, and the band’s previous releases have picked up support from MOJO, UNCUT, The Arts Desk, The Line Of Best Fit, CLASH and more, and also received plenty of airplay on BBC 6Music, BBC R1, Radio X, Amazing Radio, and Beats 1.
Second album Lillies is released on 8th September 2023 via Rama Lama Records / Gazehop Records