Bio HALEY
HALEY (fka Haley Bonar) will release her new album Pleasureland via Memphis Industries on the 12th October and today has revealed the first single “Infinite Pleasure Part 2”. Pleasureland is a bold musical statement that is completely instrumental, allowing Haley’s artistry and musicianship to take centre stage. Along-side the album announcement, Haley has shared US, UK and European tour dates, full tour itinerary can be found below.
Speaking of the new single “Infinite Pleasure Part 2”, Haley says:
“’Infinite Pleasure Part 2’ is a requiem for a beautiful world. It represents death, chaos, capitalism, self-imprisonment, and the realization of the self through outer and inner turmoil.”
Harkening back to her 2011 release Golder, which featured two instrumental tracks, McCallum has taken the instrumental concept a few steps further. Transitioning from the erratic, synth-driven intro of “Credit Forever Part 1” into the deeply enchanting “Give Yourself Away”, which blends piano melodies in the style of French Romanticism with the production stylings of Brian Eno to build a sonic landscape which is as lovely as it is uneasy. In the stoner-metal burner “Syrup”, McCallum’s lead guitar swaggers lazily over a fuzzed out, intense layer of distortion, featuring long-time collaborator and guitar wunderkind Jeremy Ylvisaker and Low’s Steve Garrington on bass. The intimate and devastating “Pig Latin” showcases McCallum’s extraordinary gift for melody, carried by world class saxophonist Mike Lewis (Happy Apple, Bon Iver), tracked live in Haley’s bedroom.
Mixed by Shuta Shinoda (Anna Meredith, Ghostpoet), McCallum’s production shines through in a new light. Sparsely interlacing the organic and digital, Pleasureland moves through the gamut of grief, perception, and empowerment, eliciting both the uneasiness of a world shifting unexpectedly as well as the innate capacity for goodness and beauty. Here, McCallum displays her longtime mastery of simple and haunting melodies that remain with the listener long after, replacing explanation through words with a pallet of sonic exploration wrapped up into just twenty-seven minutes.
Although the concepts for Pleasureland could be construed as cagey, the nature of this album is, at heart, for the listener’s pleasure alone. If you are expecting the dark pop-rock sounds which have defined HALEY’s music thus far, you will not necessarily find them here- what you will find, however, is an album that swells with powerful emotion and raw beauty, holding space for those without a voice while simultaneously creating a voice of its own. Pleasureland displays another side of a unique artist resisting the familiar aspects of success by redefining it for herself.