Video Premiere: Sugarplum Fairies – “Heart Hell 2021” ft. Sid Simons


Posted: 20th August, 2021 by The Editor

Image by Dylan Luster

LA-based Viennese dream-pop project Sugarplum Fairies emerges with their new collection Altar Songs 1998-2021 and shares their first reimagined single in years. Titled “Heart Hell 2021” ft. Sid Simons (Beechwood, Girl Skin), singer-songwriter Silvia Ryder produces a hazy and intimate noise, subtle enough that you can capture it from afar; imagine a dog barking in the distance, echoing. In the veins of Beach House, The Velvet Underground, and Mazzy Star, the simmered-down track mimics an act of easing into a deep sleep at a birthday party.

Their collection holds the old and new, including remasters and a new track “Tears.” Coupled with the release, Sugarplum Fairies premieres a music video directed by Lael Neale.

The video compiles VHS footage, taping those moments side-by-side with translucent images. Through snapshots, work and life defrost themselves alongside flaws left in the cracks. Details like a houndstooth jacket or a lightly tapped windchime carry similar importance to each shifting form of movement maintained in the small, 4-minute chronicle. Blurry specifics of a single day are memorialized, captured quickly, perhaps like cupping fireflies in a darkened forest.

Altar Songs (1998-2021) features collaborations with Uncle Tupelo/Wilco drummer and producer Ken Coomer, late Mazzy Star drummer Keith Mitchell, Jebin Bruni (Public Image Ltd, Fiona Apple) on bass and keyboards, Joey Waronker (drummer for Beck and REM), Gus Seyffert (bassist for Beck, Norah Jones), cellist Martin Tillman (Elvis Costello, T Bone Burnett), and horn-section mastermind Danny T. Levin (Iggy Pop, Rilo Kiley), amongst many others.

“The folk noir on Sugarplum Fairies’ new album comes with one foot in a European sidewalk café and the other boot on a dusty road in the vast American West.” – Buzzbands LA

Altar Songs (1998-2021) is out this Fall on Starfish Records.

Spotify pre-save “Heart Hell” (feat. Sid Simons) [2021 Version] here.

Jane Lai // @soldtogod3000


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