When Danish Singer and Producer Anders Rhedin, better known as Dinner, began writing the tracks on his upcoming album, New Work, he looked to his favorite topic for inspiration: nonduality. New Work, out 9/8 via Captured Tracks, meditates on the spiritual concept through the influence of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell and his own change in lifestyle. Dinner decided that producing New Work required that he uproot himself and go to LA where he would work on the album with co-producer Josh da Costa (Regal Degal, Ducktails) and a host of American collaborators: Andy White (Tonstartssbandht), Charlie Hilton (Blouse), Rori McCarthy (Infinite Bisous, Connan Moccasin), Staz Lindes (Paranoyds), and Sean Nicholas Savage.
Of the new tracks on New Work, Dinner said, “A lot of my favorite music is American. I thought it would be fun to go a little bit less Euro on this one. I’m plenty Euro by myself, some might say. I wanted to add a different color.” But in the spirit of nonduality, “Un-American Woman,” which we are premiering today, plays sonically with the apparent disconnect between the European and American pop sounds while ultimately revealing an underlying unity that exists between them both. Of the track, Dinner said, “Un-American Woman’ is a song I wrote just before I stopped going out, just before I stopped sleeping around with women. The song seems to be about disillusionment and a fear of being stuck in a certain lifestyle. But it also touches upon the potential transformational aspects of suffering (or ‘Duhkha’ as the Buddhists say). Nothing’s black or white, good or bad. There is just life force moving. A constant movement. ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,’ in the words of Blake. I lifted that line for the song, of course.”
On the video and it’s choice of dreamy locales, Dinner said, “the director and I just got in a car and drove through the desert, from LA to Las Vegas, to meet with the ballet dancer Hank DeMarco (Mac Demarco’s younger brother) and a group of his dancer-friends at a motel room. And then we documented our little journey as we went along. We just followed our intuition…Vegas is a very special place. I feel it is a nexus of dark, dark energy, to me. It was very important that we go there of all places. Ballet and vegas – it had to be that combination for this song. We drank milk and smoked cigarettes with the dancers. That seemed very important to do, too.”
Dinner’s record release show is at Baby’s All Right on 9/5.
09/05 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
09/13 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon LA
10/02 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe Du Nord
10/06 – Seattle, WA – W Seattle Hotel
10/09 – St. Paul, MN – Amsterdam Bar & Hall
10/16 – Philadelphia, PA – The Sound Hole
10/17 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
10/18 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
10/20 – Nashville, TN – Drkmttr
10/22 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
10/23 – Austin, TX – Hotel Vegas
10/24 – El Paso, TX – Monarch
10/25 – Tucson, AZ – Hotel Congress