The Parlor announces their 4th LP: You Are Love And I Am You, out May 19th.
Vinyl + digital available now.
P R E S S
“One of the year’s big standout releases… The Parlor present a message of love, the universes and galaxies they inhabit and their unlimited power to take us toward the furthest reaches that far extend our own humbled and human courses of comprehension.” –Week In Pop
“New York indie pop duo embark on an ambitious, ecstatic spirit quest, crafted with continuous listening in mind; a dreamy, rewarding loop.” –Bandcamp
“Remarkably attuned to the spiritual and creative value of what’s around them, they absorb everything, quickly folding together the like parts of different concepts and seeing what sparks when the other bits collide — the heuristic of the mystics, as Brian Eno would say… With “You Are Love…,” the couple has collected and condensed so much material so widely that it’s hard not to imagine it as some kind of Big Bang, each song a galaxy of swirling indie stardust.” –Altamont Enterprise
“The candidates for album of the year seem to be coming thick and fast… but this is definitely one of them. The Parlor have an unrivalled ability to compose, and this album is a trip from start to end…This is an album not so much to listen to but to feel and experience.” –York Calling
A B O U T
You Are Love And I Am You is a psychedelic indie-dream-pop record about the ecstasy of catharsis. It’s a response to The Parlor’s most recent Long Player; the 2018 album Kiku which chronicled the experience of grief and loss.
Meant to be listened to as an album, front to back. Loud, with artwork in hand. With influences from The Mamas and the Papas, Tame Impala, Broadcast, Fleetwood Mac, Warpaint, Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins, Trip Hop, New Wave, anti-folk, George Harrison, Velvet Underground, Khruangbin, Grimes, Cults, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. It plays in a loop, like an ouroboros. The cycle of birth and death.
D E T A I L S
Twelve track album recorded in the parlor of The Kirk Estate.
Featuring psychedelic collage work by Aaron Smith.
written, arranged, produced + recorded by Jen O’Connor + Eric Krans
mixed by Eric Krans
mastered by Scoops Dardaris
art by Aaron Smith
album design by Jen O’Connor + Eric Krans
c 2023 The Parlor
B A C K G R O U N D
Things got gloomy for us while touring on the Kiku record. Playing songs about trauma on a nightly basis, and the grueling nature of touring just sort of wore us down. (Jenn Pelly wrote an incredible piece for Pitchfork that relays a lot of what we experienced). Together these experiences ushered us deeper down a dark tapering claustrophobic tunnel with only a pinhole exit. The pandemic left us alone together and added its own additional sufferings, triggers, and fears.
We decided the only way out was through. And we squeezed through somehow, by sharing our deepest vulnerabilities with each other -thanks to meditative practice, and the quiet of having nothing to do -no obligations or hamster wheels to distract. Just us experiencing the purity of the heaviness and realizing there was wisdom to be found in the depths.
By accepting the seemingly unacceptable we were paradoxically filled with awe and wonder. We found a deepened sense of presence that felt sacred. Living was imbued again with light, love and gratitude. We felt inspired to write music again. This time about the ecstasy of catharsis. The other side of the chasm. We could write about finding ourselves again, and the knowing that it can only come from having survived the darkest stretch of our lives. That’s the experience this album captures. Us finding ourselves again. The heart of this album is the enigmatic realization that we are and always have been the universe experiencing itself. Both the dark and bright. We live to see another day with a new sense of how to face fear and darkness with a heart filled with wonder and light. We exist as manifestations of the universe just as everything else. And when we allow ourselves to be whole and unique, we express the universe in hi-fidelity authenticity. Something about holding that in imagination produces a sense of reverence and a desire to sing and share.”
We got into Carl Jung, archetypal symbolism, alchemy, medieval Christian mysticism, Taoism, Sufism and found hundreds of esoteric philosophical characters that seem to be sharing similar mystical experiences of their own. This album is for them. Our new long dead friends. And everyone we ever met or wished upon. You shaped us. And to anyone out there who has had, or who hopes to have, a mystical experience in their lives that orients them toward abiding presence, awe and wonder, and gratitude for all existence. We celebrate you as us. Everything and nothing is one shining-forth ineffable non-dual eminence. “Like dust in the light // Both the dark and bright.”
P R E S S
The Parlor brings us the gospel of a special system of order that arrives out of the continuous storms of chaos that contribute to the extravagant beauty of the self and spirit.” –Week in Pop
“Shimmering…simultaneously dreamy and effervescent…” -Obscure Sound
“psychedelic meanderings” // “dreamy” // “empathic” // “haunting” –Austin Town Hall
“Hazy, featherlight, and visionary with starry-eyed vocality…Romanticism in motion.” –Turn Up the Volume
“Comforting yet bittersweet…” –Loudness
“Epic in production, scope, and spirit, expanding further into bliss every step of the way.” –We All Want Someone To Shout For
“We are always seeking a greater understanding of our lives. Ourselves. The tenets and testaments of purpose. A greater knowledge of the globe that we inhabit. Yet as we surrender to the tides of constant change and acceptance of the past and all of its complexities and calamities that shape us and form the people that we have become today; we bear witness to new levels of enlightenment. A new consciousness that develops and a greater echelon of love and higher grace of living that emerges out of the chrysalis of our collective cocoons….the secret science of the mysteries that have made us into the people we are today. The Parlor shares what happens when we recognize each other and ourselves in new ways of honest realization instead of running away and hiding from meeting things head on. A surrender to love, in praise of the omnipotent power of grace that is greater than the sum of all traumas. Jen & Eric showcase in heart-spun spiritual textures of mesmerizing illuminations what happens next after healing from the wounds of hurt, trading the perilous poisons of the past for the unlimited potential and infinite possibilities that stands at the gates of today and tomorrow.” -Week in Pop
You Are Love And I Am You Release Show
RESCHEDULED TO SUNDAY, May 21st 12pm-5pm, FREE, all ages
Indian Ladder Cidery & Brewery Upper Biergarten