We are very excited to welcome Wallis Bird back onto The White Horse Sessions stage this Autumn. 

The front cover of Irish born, Berlin based WALLIS BIRD’s new album features a black and white photograph of

a hand. A cursory look might not reveal anything unusual, but it only takes a moment to recognise it’s no

ordinary hand. In the shadows there’s a stump where the little finger should be, and something seems off

about the other digits too. Some will understand its significance: they’ll have seen it strumming an

upside-down, right-handed guitar, picking in unorthodox style, forming unconventional chords. The hand, you

see, is WALLIS BIRD’s, and it’s there because, having spent much of her life trying to exist despite its

restrictions, she’s reached a point where she recognises that, in many ways, it’s always been vital to her lived

reality. With this has come a realisation of “who I am, what I am, and what I don’t want.” HANDS documents

her subsequent process of change, and its consequences, with typically distinctive style, making it – hands

down, naturally – one of the most honest albums you’ll hear at a time when honesty is at a premium.

If 2019’s exceptional Woman represented an ambitious state of the world address, HANDS – also known as

NINE AND A HALF SONGS FOR NINE AND A HALF FINGERS – finds BIRD turning the spotlight onto herself,

raising issues that are sometimes far harder to confront, only to emerge optimistic and whole. Among these

are issues of trust, alcohol abuse, stagnation, self-censorship and self-improvement, some addressed through

personal recollections of crucial moments accumulated over the last two years. Each, however, is delivered by

a voice uncommonly blessed with joy, ingenuity and empathy.

Where its predecessor was bathed in soul music, HANDS adapts sounds from BIRD’s early childhood. Barring

the intimately confessional ‘I’ll Never Hide My Love Away’, its songs are flushed with bright colours, many

familiar from the 1980s and ‘90s. Its bookends are ‘Go’, whose smooth R&B inflections provide a neat bridge

from the album’s forerunner, and ‘Pretty Lies’, its euphoric conclusion powered by forty chunky chord

progressions. In-between, HANDS rarely pauses. The jubilant ‘What’s Wrong With Changing’ appropriates the

rhythmic discipline of Janet Jackson’s Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and janet., and ‘I Lose Myself Completely’

revels in Trevor Horn’s work, while the grinning ‘No Pants Dance’, written after witnessing neighbours

celebrating lockdown’s end, would have delighted Prince, and ‘Dreamwriting’ – “a reminder to myself of one

of my most favourite memories in recent years” – is full of warmth, lyrically and musically.

‘Aquarius’ dreamy chord changes and unexpected pedal steel, meanwhile, help unleash some of the prettiest

instrumental sections 2022’s likely to enjoy, and there are pensive moments, too, not least ‘The Dive’, which

describes a gesture BIRD treasures as “one of the most brave and romantic memories I own” and which wields

a muted trumpet and Mediterranean guitars while its melody skips along dreamily as though through a

summer meadow. If the sonic palette is different, then, HANDS is still defiantly, happily WALLIS BIRD.

“HANDS for me is a symbol of humanity, connection and time,” BIRD elaborates. “Humanity because, as

babies, a first sign of our knowledge of existence is through our connection when we grip another human’s

finger. If we don’t have hands, are we lesser humans? No. Connection, because hands represent tactility and

expression, a physical language that links our imagination and our reality with each other’s. Finally, time,

because some of the first examples of civilisations were hand paintings on cave walls, some of those hands

missing fingers, celebrating their story of existence.”

HANDS’ themes, though, are obviously personal. “At 18 months old I fell under a lawnmower and cut all my

fingers off,” BIRD states simply. “Four were reconnected. One was lost. This led me to relearn how to hold

things, and, when the time came, to play the guitar differently. As a toddler, I remember seeing those cave

pictures and being fascinated. What happened? How painful was that? This shaped me: I wanted to draw my

heart like that, to celebrate time, scars, stories and humanity on a wall where others could too.”

As 2019 came to an end, BIRD found herself with time enough to reassess her relationship with her hand –

and indeed herself – so decided to take a rare break. She’s released six albums since 2007, for which she’s won

two Meteor Awards, Ireland’s annual music prize – mostly recently for Best Female Artist – and a prestigious

2017 German “Musikautorenpreis” (Music Author Prize), not to mention two further nominations for the

Choice Music Prize, Ireland’s equivalent to Britain’s Mercury Prize. In addition, she’s racked up over a thousand

shows during the past decade, earning a reputation worldwide for passionate, energetic, good-humoured

concerts. She began her sabbatical by quitting alcohol, a decision at the heart of ‘I Lose Myself Completely’,

and four days later, she recalls, “I went to Philipp Milner (producer / musician, Hundreds)’s house to make

some music, and my world opened up like an orchid.” Subsequently, she details, the album “was recorded in

fifty weeks, primarily in Philipp’s farmhouse studio in Wendland, my studio in Berlin, and Marcus Wuest’s in

Sandhausen, where I’ve recorded all my albums.”

HANDS was completed with ‘The Power Of A Word’, a hushed showcase for shimmering synths and a notably

ethereal vocal. At the heart of the track – as with so much of HANDS – is self-examination, change and

acceptance. “Up until recently,” BIRD concludes, “I simply treated my hand as something additional, not

primary to my story. But, during this pandemic, when everything in my usual life was scattered, I found myself

wondering ‘Who am I? What am I? What story do I leave behind?’ My story had been one of stubborn ‘I can

do it just as good as anyone’, but this new chapter in my life has been about letting go of over-controlling,

handing things over to others, being comfortable with my surroundings and colleagues, and knowing I’m

understood. Right now, I’m a passenger, a guest in my life, because the album has been so collaborative and so

out-of-bodily written, almost hypnotically. And I love it!”

And it shows. So let’s see those HANDS in the air. After all, there’s a lot to celebrate here...

www.wallisbird.com

https://www.instagram.com/wallisbirdofficial

We are so happy to have Wallis back on The White Horse Sessions stage this Autumn. These will fly out the door! Get your tickets soo!

Please note refunds are available up to 24 hours before the scheduled date and time of gig.