Miya Folick Shares New Single 'Erotica' Ahead of Upcoming Album

Miya Folick has annnounced Erotica Veronica, her new album due February 28th via Nettwerk. On the self-produced album, Folick is both audacious and hauntingly profound. Erotica Veronica is her psychosexual, psychosensual masterstroke: a kaleidoscopic portrait of self-realization and integration. Nothing exemplifies this more than the album’s opener and lead single “Erotica,” available now.

"'Erotica' is a song about fantasy and pleasure - It’s not just about sex, it’s about a richness of experience, a playfulness, a connection, an open approach to each day. I think that we’re fed rules about what an appropriate fantasy looks like, especially when you’re coupled. Our culture is so puritanical in that way. But I think that it’s important for me to retain my autonomy of thought, and truthfully sharing my fantasies is an act of tenderness and intimacy,” Folick explains.

Under the song’s euphoric, springtime air, we catch a whiff of the dilemma that haunts the record. There is a partner on the receiving end of these confessions. The song and the album seem to wonder: what is the right thing to do when your desires are more complex than the narrow channel our culture allows? “The album is about being queer within a heteronormative relationship structure and within a heteronormative society, but it’s also just about desire and eroticism in general. I don’t think we give each other enough room to explore freely and figure out our own right paths,” she says.

The album features contributions from Sam KS (Youth Lagoon, Angel Olsen) as co-producer and drummer, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits, Perfume Genius), Waylon Rector (Dominic Fike, Charli XCX), and Greg Uhlmann (Perfume Genius, SML) on guitar, and Pat Kelly (Perfume Genius, Levi Turner) on bass.  

The album cover of Erotica Veronica captures Miya Folick canted on the edge of a mud pit high up in Angeles National Forest, limbs flung wide like a fever-dream fossilized midway between earth and primordial soup. It’s an apt portrait: Miya is driven by instinct, drawn to the murk and muck of growth rather than stalled by its complexity. This brazen spirit is what led her to self-produce her latest full-length record, Erotica Veronica. The record is arguably her most canonical work thus far: saturated with her catchy lyrical sensibility, astute musical craftsmanship, and her signature vaulting, acrobatic voice.

Both critically acclaimed precursors to Erotica Veronica - her debut Premonitions and sophomore LP Roach - have been lauded as coming-of-age rhapsodies. It is tempting to say the same of Erotica Veronica; after all, this new album shows us a woman running headlong into sexual exploration, often teetering on the adolescent edge of hedonism and fear. Yet, unlike the feral freedom of youth, this roving spirit is anchored by the particular wisdom and depth gained only through lived experience. Perhaps it was the witchy riddle of Premonitions joined with Roach’s excoriating honesty which prepared her for this deep dive into the sensual world.

The record was written in a lightning month and a half, on the heels of a brutal, burn-out stretch of touring. Determined to make a straight-shooting indie rock record, Miya turned to guitar to write a majority of the album. She went into the studio with the intention of capturing raw, live sound - opting for full takes rather than splicing and editing recordings together. The clarity of the sonic landscape is a fitting foil for the record’s thematic cats-cradle. Lyrically, we find conflicting moods and feelings crossing paths, as if Miya were tracing her way back to vitality through a hedge maze of herself.

Photo Credit: Jonny Marlow

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