Toronto’s Praises is the dark electronic solo project of Beliefs’ Jesse Crowe who announces her debut album, ‘In This Year: Ten of Swords,‘ which will be out via Hand Drawn Dracula on December 7th. She’s shared the album’s haunting piano driven sound with its first single, Love Unkind, before embarking on a European tour that begins on November 10th.
Praises’ ‘In This Year: Ten of Swords’ features all instruments played and self-recorded by Jesse Crowe, with co-production from her longtime collaborator Josh Korody, whose work as a producer includes celebrated releases from Dilly Dally, Partner, and F***ked Up.
Praises arrived at a time when Crowe was struggling to find an outlet for her most personal demons. The project was created as a quiet conversation on the love, loss, and lessons that can’t quite fit within the public forum of a collaborative band. With songs coded in life’s stories, she invites friends and lovers to find lines encrypted in the lyrics that point directly at them. Deeply personal, yet highly fictionalized.
Over the years since Praises’ origins, Crowe has been learning and growing her musical palette from solo guitar to full band and now has expanded to feature piano, modular programming, and hardware synths. She has also moved forward to self-production, with rhythmic additions and production nods to her Beliefs bandmate Korody, who added texture and structure to the album via modular synth. With influences ranging from Nick Cave to Portishead, Praises pulls from both a masculine and feminine struggle to bring the torment back into the piano where it belongs.
Praises’ ‘In This Year: Ten of Swords’ will be released by Hand Drawn Dracula on December 7th. It is now available for pre-order here. More information on the album and her European tour is below.
‘In This Year: Ten Of Swords’ tracklisting
1) Love Unkind
2) All Demon’s Reign
3) Prey
4) Welcome Home
5) Run
6) Three Of Swords
7) Anyone’s Anyone
8) C To C
9) Closer
Live performances
11/10/18 Berlin DE – Madame Claude
11/11/18 Leipzig DE – TBA
11/12/18 Kassel DE – Sanderhause
11/14/18 Copenhagen DK – Blagards Apotek
11/17/18 Amsterdam NL – Vondelbunker
11/19/18 Manchester UK – The Peer Hat
11/20/18 Nottingham UK – Chameleon Arts
11/22/18 Leeds UK – Northern Guitars
11/23/18 London UK – Caravansérail
11/25/18 Oxford UK – The Library
