Following the summer release of her debut album Fading Lines through Heavenly Recordings and her recent US tour this past September and October supporting Nada Surf, Dutch musician Amber Arcades has shared a new track entitled “It Changes”. A new EP from Amber Arcades is forthcoming.

Of the track’s motivation, Annelotte de Graaf explains:
“Everything changes, all the time. You think that when starting something new you can kinda tell which way it will go, but you never do. I always try to aim for constancy and stability but things always get messier than I foresaw. And hey, maybe that’s actually what makes it worthwhile.”

Fading Lines was recorded at Strange Weather Studio in New York with producer Ben Greenberg (The Men, Beach Fossils, Destruction Unit) and was inspired by time, continuity, coincidence and magic. Other inspirations include early-morning jetlag and an artist’s plans for a utopian city. Although this sounds dreamy in nature (and these songs do possess a seamless, ethereal quality), De Graaf’s dreams are not rooted in whimsy. In fact, they have led to her working as a legal aide on UN war crime tribunals (she currently works in human rights law with people who had fled Syria), to inviting strangers to share her Utrecht squat (which led to a friendship and later to her signing to Heavenly), and to spending her life savings on a flight to New York because that’s where she wanted to record her first album.

After researching producers and deciding to work with Greenberg (“the odd one out as he’d produced all this hardcore punk shit”), Annelotte was joined by Shane Butler and Keven Lareau of Quilt on guitar and bass, Jackson Pollis of Real Estate on drums, plus Meg Duffy on slide guitar on the eerie, clip-clopping “Apophenia”. They listened to “a lot of Suicide, Broadcast, Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, The Gun Club…” and worked on the songs that Annelotte had written at home in Utrecht.”In New York everything came together beautifully,” says De Graaf. “The whole team, the producer and the band. It was a magical time – writing an album had been an abstract thing in my mind and recording it in New York had been a wild, surreal plan. It never really occurred to me that it would happen until I sat on the plane. I had this money in my savings account and I thought, I’m going to make an album.”

You can read our interview with Amber Arcades from last year here and listen to the new track below.

Amber Arcades Tour Dates:
Mar 22 The Basement York, United Kingdom
Mar 29 Rock City Nottingham, United Kingdom
Mar 30 CLWB Ifor Bach Cardiff, United Kingdom
Mar 31 Colston Hall Bristol, United Kingdom
Apr 03 The Roundhouse London, United Kingdom
Apr 05 Ancienne Belgique Brussels, Belgium
Apr 09 L’Aeronef Lille, France
Apr 20 Paradiso Noord, Tolhuistuin Amsterdam, Netherlands
Apr 21 Paard van Troje The Hague, Netherlands
Apr 22 TivoliVredenburg Utrecht, Netherlands
Apr 28 De Effenaar, Kleine Zaal Eindhoven, Netherlands