Joana Serrat has performed on the biggest festival stages across Europe and the USA, including Black Deer Festival, Celtic Connections and The Long Road in the UK, SXSW and Americana Fest twice (2017 and 2019) in the States, and Benicassim’s FIB Festival and Primavera Sound in Spain. She’s supported artists including The Jayhawks, Neko Case, Courtney Marie Andrews, Ryan Bingham, Cordovas, Susto while performing headline shows across the globe.
Serrat’s fifth album, Hardcore From The Heart (due out June 11th on Loose Music) is the follow-up to 2017’s acclaimed Dripping Springs. For the recording, Serrat travelled from her home in Vic, a small city near Barcelona (Spain), to Redwood Studio in Denton, Texas, where she teamed up with Grammy Winner engineer and producer Ted Young (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, Alan Vega, The Rolling Stones).
Hardcore From The Heart starts with loss and ends with acceptance of the impossibility of achieving an ideal life, examining the imbalance that exists between the life lived and the ideal sought. Its title is borrowed from the book by sexologist and essayist Annie Sprinkles to reflect the nuanced, emotional and introspective journey that Serrat pursues in her lyrics and music.
On Hardcore From The Heart, Joana is joined by some of the musicians she worked with on Dripping Springs – including guitarist Joey McClellan (Rufus Wainwright, Midlake, BNQT, John Grant, Elle King) and bassist Aaron McClellan (Josh T. Pearson, BNQT, Israel Nash) – who are joined by drummer McKenzie Smith (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, First Aid Kit) and keyboard-player Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev). The magical varnish of mastering this flammable and fragile material is down to sound engineer Heba Kadry (Slowdive, Beach House, Future Islands).
The end result is a painfully honest and moving album, which grows on you with each hearing as new and rich complexities are discovered. Hardcore From The Heart showcases Serrat’s best vocal performance to date and marks a literary peak in her songwriting career.
Today Glide is delighted to offer an exclusive premiere of Serrat’s music video for “You’re With Me Everywhere I Go,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. Featuring visuals that feel both nostalgic and haunting, the video perfectly showcases what makes Serrat’s music so powerful. With plenty of slow motion shots and grainy washed out footage, Serrat serenades the camera. The song carries a big and dramatic sound, blending indie rock, sweeping pop, and plenty of dreamy guitar. There are elements of New Wave alongside her lush folk stylings, and Serrat unleashes her true power as a vocalist as she stirs up one emotion after another and really pulls you inside the world of the song. The lyrics touch on relationships and it’s impossible to ignore the timeless romanticism in Serrat’s voice. If you have been lucky enough to hear her previous album, which carried more of a 70s folk-rock sound, “You’re With Me Everywhere I Go” is a strong indication that Serrat is progressing as an artist and moving into exciting new territory as she dabbles in pop and dramatic rock sounds.Â
Serrat describes the inspiration and process behind the song and video:
“Pol Fuentes, the director, had this idea about me picking up all these sorts of lovers and take them for a ride, as a representation of several erratic relationships. He had also planned to shoot me at his studio to simulate a hotel lobby where I have several encounters with these two characters. In the middle of the filming we started to have fun and that’s how I ended up dancing in front of a fan. So once Pol was editing the video he realized that it had sense to show this story of me having this journey from caos to stability. I think the whole music video represents a fight between my actions and my inner core in the search for an exit”.
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Photo by Andrea Font
