This summer Braids will mark the long-awaited return with new album Shadow Offering. It's the Montreal band's first effort since 2015's Deep In The Iris and today they share "Snow Angel," a sprawling nine-minute-long track written amid the ever-changing political and global landscape the band found themselves in while working on new music. Producer Chris Walla (Death Cab For Cutie) lets the band breathe throughout the epic track, letting the energy ebb and flow as Raphaelle Standell-Preston switches her vocals between singing and spoken-word. The whole thing builds to a frantic final third in which the chaos and confusion is palpable.
In a statement, Standell-Preston told The FADER: “‘Snow Angel’ was written in the immediate wake of the 2016 U.S. election, as our collective conscience took a sharp inhale. It’s a diary entry of sorts – a snapshot of the mind grappling with our era’s endless barrage of content and destruction, continents away and close to home. *This* moment, with our world in the midst of a pandemic, is admittedly a new context. But I can’t help but sense the song speaks to feelings many of us are experiencing – uncertainty, angst and a desperate desire to make sense of it all.
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"For me, it was deeply therapeutic to write and sing this song; saying things out loud can help us to not feel so alone, can help validate our natural fears about the future of our world, and can bring to light some of the hard questions that many of us are asking ourselves. I believe that art can change our relationship to fear. We hope this song can offer you a moment of catharsis and relief, in the same way writing and performing it has for us.”
Check out the "Snow Angel" video above. Shadow Offering's release date has been postponed to June 19 due to the coronavirus outbreak.