A.O. Gerber Shares New Single 'Looking For The Right Things'

Today Los Angeles based musician A.O. Gerber is thrilled to return with the enthralling and hopeful new track "Looking for the Right Things", which was co-produced by Madeline Kenney and is released through Father/Daughter Records (US) & Hand In Hive (UK). Accompanying the track is a beguiling video directed by Erik Schute that offers a dreamy catharsis through the freeing physical movements of A.O. Gerber herself.

She has also announced a run of West Coast tour dates supporting Juana Molina. All dates are listed below.

Speaking on the track, A.O. Gerber says: "I wrote this song in 2017 in a moment of exasperation, when my desire to show up as my honest self and let someone else show up as theirs felt impossibly difficult. That refrain, "Looking for the right things," was a sort of anxious plea - this looping frustration over the distance between intention and reality, the desire for closeness and the complexity of actually allowing it. We tried to record this song for my first record and we couldn't get the production right (irony!). As the years went on, I tried again and again to re-work it, and the repetition of that refrain started taking on new meaning. There's anxiety in it, yes, but there's also gentleness, self-nurturance, and even some hope - this feeling that it's worth it to stay open, stay tender, stay messy.

She adds of the video: "There's a bit of subtle humor in this video that I like - this song is about how frustratingly difficult human connection can be, but this video is me trapped in my dusty mind, flinging myself around in the void alone, which isn't too far off from the truth of what happens when I get stuck in my own head trying to figure out who and how I should be in the world. There's a sort of self-involvedness to that kind of perfectionism that I feel like this video (which was produced lovingly by Yellow House Sessions and directed/edited by Erik Shute) captures really well."

When we pick apart the pieces of our past, and turn them over in our hands, they can feel weighted, worn, and weathered with the smog of perspective. And as we try to stitch them together, how do we navigate our own pattern when what we might've been taught is too binary, too black and white, a thread woven too tight?

A.O. Gerber carefully grapples with the constraints she was taught as a child to reach for the flourishing that comes when we look past the black and white, and into the gray gauze of the in-between. "I was thinking about how damaging it can be to exist in that binary space of good and evil," Gerber explains. "When we see everything in either/or's, we lose the nuance and complexity that make life rich enough to be worth living." By interlocking memory and imagination, Gerber crafts a gleaming future, where the light and the dark don't just coexist--they create a new color entirely.

Gerber's debut LP Another Place To Need (2020) garnered critical acclaim for its candid, orchestral ruminations on splintered relationships and the cage of overthinking. The record saw Gerber collaborate with much of her musical community in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, including Sasami, Madeline Kenney, Marina Allen and Noah Weinman (Runnner).

On "Looking for the Right Things," the production thrives under an electro-pop blanket, as bright percussion and sharp, vivid keys give rise to Gerber's warm, velvet-smooth vocals. "I just wanna feel clean / I'm missing someone I knew once / Now she doesn't exist," she croons, charting the push-and-pull between wanting to be good, and the seeming impossibility of it. We are always at odds with ourselves, and "Looking for the Right Things," peels back the desire to attain this idea of goodness while reckoning with the reality of our humanness, and the beauty of our imperfections. "As much as I'd like to make relationships as simple as figuring out how to be 'good' and that being enough, it's always messier than that."

"Looking for the Right Things" beautifully highlights Gerber's impeccable songcraft and ear for lush arrangements, and proves only a taste of the excitement to come in 2022.

LIVE DATES:

5/3 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern*

5/4 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios*

5/6 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent*

5/7 - Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour*

5/13 - The Great Escape Festival, Brighton, UK:

-The Line of Best Fit Stage @ One Church

-Hand In Hive x Sub Pop Publishing stage @ The Mucky Duck

*supporting Juana Molina

Purchase or stream "'Looking for the Right Things" HERE

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