Vera Ellen has shared a brand new song and video — ‘Broadway Junction’ — the final heart-wrenching single from the artist’s upcoming album, Ideal Home Noise. Straying from her typically practised restraint, this new single showcases Vera’s incredible vocal character and range and truly hits the listener where it hurts. Ideal Home Noise is out digitally and on both red or black vinyl and CD this Friday March 31st, 2023 via Flying Nun Records.
Broadway Junction came to Vera on a cold Autumn’s day in New York. “Returning home from the laundromat with a heavy sack of clothes on my back and about 100 layers of clothes, I started humming the melody and next thing I knew the entire song was before me. When a song comes in like that it always feels extra special. As for the subject matter, it's all there, ain't much to add."
Alongside the single, Vera Ellen and Sports Team have shared the final instalment of the video trilogy, made with the support of New Zealand on Air: “Performing that song in a dark warehouse with my band around me and my brother at the piano felt like a strange fever dream that was the last stage in completing the song’s journey for me. It was like Sports Team climbed inside my brain."
LISTEN/WATCH ‘BROADWAY JUNCTION’
About their latest Sports Team produced/directed video, Callum Devlin and Annabel Kean say “And so the trilogy concludes! This has been a wild and rewarding ride, made all the more wonderful by Vera and her band secretly being really great actors (excluding drummer and DOP Samuel - his skills were no secret). As is the Sports Team way, our visual accompaniments to an artists’ songs are there to compliment rather than reinforce. That’s how you end up with a spooky funny glampire (glam vampire) clip to go with Broadway/Junction - a stunning ballad that’s heavy as hell.
Thank you so much to our lovely extras who were surprisingly chill about being gagged and zip tied. Special mention to total star Phoenix Connolly who brought all the shiny horror of her Evil Dead days to this poor panicked character <3”
Ideal Home Noise is a record unearthed from much introspection and an attempt to find some comedy and lightness in an otherwise dark period for Vera Ellen. With two "voices” battling throughout the album, the instrumentation is sometimes light — featuring synths and electronic drums — and sometimes heavy — with ballad-like piano and raw vocals.
After the critical success of her 2021 album, It’s Your Birthday — which earned the artist both the ‘Best Alternative Artist’ award at the 2022 AMA’s as well as a 2022 Taite Award nomination — Vera’s momentum is unstoppable with her new 13 track album raring to go. “If It's Your Birthday was about relationships and love and strife between myself and others; then Ideal Home Noise is about love and strife between myself and myself.“.
The record was tracked at Wellington studio, The Surgery, with the talented multi-instrumentalist Ben Lemi (of Trinity Roots, French For Rabbits and Dawn Diver fame) on production and engineering duties. “Ben helped bring the record to life from my initial demos in a very organic way” says Vera.
On the name of the upcoming album, Ideal Home Noise, Vera explains that she came across the phrase in a book, while house-sitting a Malibu property formerly occupied by The Beach Boys. Since then, the words have been recycled through various notebooks and phone apps, somehow remaining in the artist’s subconscious all these years later.
In a very personal statement about Ideal Home Noise, Vera Ellen has summarised “My songs have been my friends, my lovers, my enemies. I have been their biggest critic and fan and they have been mine. And as for this album, you will hear my pain up close, but you can take comfort knowing I wouldn't trade it for the world. So here we go, to another album. One of many more (I hope).”
Ideal Home Noise is out digitally and on both red or black vinyl and CD on Friday March 31st, 2023 via Flying Nun Records.