Rose Hotel Shares Lynchian Short Film for New Single 'Fruit Tree'

Atlanta-based artist Rose Hotel is set to release her label debut A Pawn Surrender via Strolling Bones Records on June 7 and ahead of the release, she is premiering a Lynchian short film for her new single "Fruit Tree" at Magnet Magazine.

The clip was directed by Hannah Welever and produced by Good Trouble Films (Katy Kirby, STRFKR, Esperanza Spalding). Of the track, Reynolds offers, "I wrote Fruit Tree towards the end of the album writing process — a time where I was thinking very much about what I wanted from music and my 'career' and if that dream was even possible anymore. I wanted to personify the temptation of success in music as something sensual and lusted over, which brought up the image of the forbidden fruit. The lyrics are written from the perspective of the Fruit Tree, but with the tantalizing voice of an alluring woman. Sort of a 'Be Careful What You Wish For' tune."

Rose Hotel has previously shared singles "Not Like That" and "Drown" with Brooklyn Vegan calling the latter "a mix of slacker indie rock, folk, and psychedelia" and noting similarities to "early Courtney Barnett EPs."

Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds began playing keys for Kentucky psych-rock band Buffalo Rodeo at 19 and has built a career as a side musician for acts like Faye Webster, Neighbor Lady, Susto, and She Returns From War since self-releasing Rose Hotel’s I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes in 2019. Reynolds co-produced the upcoming album with Atlanta-based engineers Damon Moon (Bathe Alone) and Graham Tavel (Material Girls) and tapped acclaimed Athens, Georgia producer Drew Vandenberg (Faye Webster, S.G Goodman, Stella Donnelly) for mixing and additional production. The group of studio musicians she assembled nods to her time spent in DIY scenes throughout the Southeast, collectively known for their work with Orville Peck, Margo Price, S.G. Goodman, Caitlin Rose, Rich Ruth, Neighbor Lady, Night Palace, and CDSM.

A Pawn Surrender sees Reynolds claiming her agency with a 10-song set of nuanced indie-rock songcraft that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence. With a drive to pay homage to the legends of the art form, she uses the trappings of psychedelic rock not as source material, but as ornamentation, as she explores relationships, feminine rage, lust, temptation, blissful ignorance, frightening apathy, delusions, and illusions. While her 2019 debut presented a coming-of-age tale, A Pawn Surrender nourishes the garden of adulthood with a cohesive but genre-spanning approach that Reynolds was empowered to achieve through a chess metaphor: 

“I was playing a lot of chess when I wrote this album, so I started to think about these songs as if they were all different pieces on the board representing varying aspects of my songwriting, personality, and experience. Each piece has its own specific purpose and its own strength to utilize, but you can't play the game with only your queen or your knights, or whatever. That became such a comforting idea and ethos to operate within – not just accepting variety but finding its inherent value. I went into the studio without any fear of being all over the board. I wanted to be limitless in letting my influences shine through the music in different ways. The throughline of Rose Hotel is my lyricism and my voice, but musically, I wanted to stretch out."

A Pawn Surrender Tracklist

1. Fall in Love Again and Again
2. Fruit Tree
3. Drown
4. Not Like That
5. King and a Pawn
6. Pushing Me
7. On Your Side
8. Pull the Wool
9. Every Day
10. Illusion Anyway

Rose Hotel On Tour:

May 30 — Nashville, TN @ The Basement (Tickets)
May 31 — Athens, GA @ Flicker (Tickets)
June 1 — Atlanta, GA @ The Earl (Tickets)
June 6 — Washington, DC @ Byrdland Records In-Store (FREE with RSVP)
June 7 — Brooklyn, NY @ Purgatory (Tickets)
June 8 — Philadelphia, PA @ Abyssinia (Tickets)

June 14 — Greensboro, NC @ Flat Iron*
June 15 — Charlotte, NC @ Visulite*
June 20 — Greenville, SC @ Swanson's Warehouse*
June 21 — Charleston, SC @ Royal American*
June 22 — Savannah, GA @ Over Yonder*

June 27 — Columbus, GA @ Silvan Guitars*
June 28 — Tucker, GA @ Moody Motel*
June 29 — Chattanooga, TN @ Common House*
June 30 — Waverly, AL @ Standard Deluxe*
*with Spencer Thomas

Photo Credit: Logan White

To post a comment, you must register and login.