'Birthmarks': Irish singer Hilary Woods drops sophomore album that explores birthing of self amid continuous change
Irish singer and musician Hilary Woods has announced her upcoming album 'Birthmarks' which is scheduled for release on March 13 via Sacred Bones Records.
Written over the course of two years and recorded while Woods was heavily pregnant between Galway, Ireland, and Oslo, Norway, in the winter of 2019, her new sophomore album follows her 2018 debut studio LP, 'Colt', that released on the same label.
Hailing from Dublin's Northside, Woods has been held as a promising artist in both her experimental Irish music and visual artistry. Since her self-released 2014 EP 'Night', Woods has launched a string of successful tours and was awarded Dublin Fringe Festival's Wild Card Artiste title.
She has not only worked on music but has also dipped her hands in film. She composed an original score for a horror film for the Irish Film Institute's Weimar Republic cinema season.
Woods was once the teenage bass player in the Dublin alternative/indie band JJ72 and left later to pursue her own solo career which has already seen a booming success.
According to the Irish Times, the singer attributed part of her reason to leave the band was that she was "incredibly young" at the time.
"It was my first experience of being in a band, and I was on tour with all men. There were no women on tour", she said. "I missed my sisters and friends, and it was a full-on, pretty grueling touring schedule.”
Regarded as "a labor of intensity and intuition", the new studio album comes as an exploration of "the oscillating and volatile processes of selfhood and becoming, hidden gestational growth, and the birthing of the Self, amid continuous social and personal change," according to a statement.
Woods shared the inspiration behind the opening track of 'Birthmarks', titled 'Tongues of Wild Boar' which she explained that it navigates "emotionally charged states of discomfort and becoming, it is a song deeply lodged in the body that yearns to surface for air and escape its own shadow," according to Fact Magazine.
Watch the music video for 'Tongues of Wild Boar' here.
Hilary Woods 'Birthmarks' tracklist:
1. 'Tongues of Wild Boar'
2. 'Orange Tree'
3. 'Through the Dark, Love'
4. 'Lay Bare'
5. 'Mud and Stones'
6. 'The Mouth'
7. 'Cleansing Ritual'
8. 'There Is No Moon'