Eora/Sydney indie-rock outfit The Tambourine Girls have returned with their long-awaited new album Hold Your Horses, a record shaped by grief, friendship and ultimately finding a way forward.
Released today, Thursday, 10th September, the LP was recorded entirely in a shed on the quiet outskirts of Armidale, with bassist Pat Harris handling production and engineering duties.
The Tambourine Girls – Hold Your Horses
Mixing was split between Nick Franklin – whose credits include Ocean Alley, Polish Club and Hockey Dad – and Tony Buchen, with Matt Stewart taking care of mastering.
At the heart of Hold Your Horses is the loss of The Tambourine Girls’ close friend and bandmate Nick Weaver, with frontman Simon Relf revealing the finished record effectively grew out of two separate albums.
“Effectively this is two albums distilled into one,” Relf explained.
“I always wanted to make an album called Hold Your Horses, but after Nick died I wrote so many songs of grief that I thought that I was working on a record called Sad Parties.”
Eventually, though, Relf found himself wanting to shift the focus away from loss and towards the life and friendship that came before it.
“Eventually I got tired of the constant eulogising and always speaking about Nick as someone who died, rather than someone who lived,” he continued.
“When the three of us started playing together, it felt important to acknowledge how lucky we are to be together, and so the album has anger and sadness in it, but also resolution and joy in the mystery.”
Recorded by the current trio of Relf, Harris and Carlos Adura, Hold Your Horses folds airy synths, lo-fi textures and driving indie-rock hooks into the band’s classic songwriting sensibilities.
The new LP follows The Tambourine Girls’ 2023 album Different Streets and adds another chapter to a catalogue stretching back to their 2014 debut EP The End Of Time, alongside their 2016 self-titled album and 2018’s Waiting For Pleasure.
To celebrate the album’s arrival, the band will also play an intimate hometown launch show at Bootleggers in Sydney on Friday, 18th September.
Stream the LP up above, and catch the launch show details below.
The Tambourine Girls – ‘Hold Your Horses’ Launch Show
- Friday, 18th September – Bootleggers, Eora/Sydney NSW
Further Reading
The Tambourine Girls Return From Tragedy With Poignant New Single, ‘Wrong Way’
PREMIERE: The Tambourine Girls’ ‘Plastic Eyes’ is the Final Song Written With Guitarist Nick Weaver
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