The multi-award winner announces an Australian tour taking in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Anglesea, Melbourne and Sydney this May.
Changing gears, Jen Cloher has released their most unruly single yet in ‘My Witch‘, from their forthcoming fifth album I Am The River, The River Is Me which will be released on Friday, 3rd March 2023 via Milk! / Remote Control Records. The single is accompanied by an equally unbridled clip featuring a top-tier cast of Georgia Maq, Mo’Ju, Kira Puru, Alice Skye and Lay the Mystic.
Alongside the single, the multi-award winner announces an Australian tour taking in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Anglesea, Melbourne and Sydney this May.
As part of the tour, Cloher will take to The Sound Doctor Presents on Friday, May 26. Initiated by Dr David Corbet, The Sound Doctor is a group of Surf Coast music lovers passionate about bringing established artists to perform in an intimate venue in Anglesea, Victoria. After their hugely successful start in 2017, The Sound Doctor Presents crew have made their mark on the region, bringing music to the ears of music-loving locals over the past six years.
Jen Cloher Australian Tour
Wednesday, 1st March
Jet Black Cat Music in-store, Brisbane
Saturday, 6 May
Rechabite, Perth
Friday, 12 May
The Gov, Adelaide
Saturday, 20 May
Princess, Brisbane
Friday, 26 May
Sound Doctor, Anglesea
Saturday, 27 May
Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
Thursday, 1st June
Venue TBA, Sydney
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On the new single, Cloher says: “I went to a party in 2022 where a friend had hired a portable cedar spa. They had set it up in the backyard and after a big feast people started to pile in. As the night progressed things became more and more debauched, bodies tangled together, laughter and booze, like a Bacchanalian scene in a forest… cut to 6 months later when I’m trying to think of a way to tell a funny (but sexy) story to accompany My Witch. I had been attending Pony Club Gym in Preston for a couple of years and I thought it would make the perfect setting for a pair of babes to be flirting during a steamy workout. Then to casting.. if there’s anyone who reps body positivity and owning their deep hotness it has to be Georgia Maq from Camp Cope. I had my Witch slash Personal Trainer cast!
The gym scene needed to be about holding back though because the suggestion of something happening is sexier. Then it came to me! The explosion the song needed during the mega raunch guitar solo could take place in a spa cauldron. Georgia would lure me to her coven where things would turn wild. Now to casting a coven of hot witches.. Seeing as me and Georgia are songwriters and performers it made sense that her coven would be overflowing with iconic Naarm based songwriting witches – Mo’Ju, Alice Skye, Kira Puru and Lay the Mystic all said yes to my invitation to spend an evening in a spa eating a lot of watermelon. The rest is history.”
On their first album in five years, Cloher finally breathes out. I Am The River, The River Is Me, their fifth album, is verdant and rich; it luxuriates in stillness, and carries itself with cool, unfussy confidence. It suggests that home is not found in a place or a politic, but in the community you keep: Inspired by Cloher’s powerful matrilineal line of wāhine Māori, I Am The River, The River Is Me is not urgent, or hurried, but it is vital, made with the care and ease of someone who knows that their past began before birth, and will continue long after they’re gone.
I Am The River, The River Is Me is an album of remarkable generosity and grace. Recorded between Aotearoa (NZ) and Naarm (Melbourne) with producers Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, Marlon Williams), Anika Ostendorf (Hachiku) and Cloher’s longtime drummer Jen Sholakis; the album brings in trailblazing artists including Emma Donovan (Gumbaynggirr, Yamatji), Kylie Auldist, Liz Stringer, Te Kaahu (Waikato-Tainui/Ngāti Tīpā), Ruby Solly (Kai Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) and members of the Naarm-based Kapa Haka, Te Hononga o ngā Iwi. The entire record feels communal — a celebration not just of Cloher, but of the rich, life-filled communities that surround them.
These are fiercely political songs that never feel heavy: They are energetic and full-blooded, alive with the knowledge that to simply exist — to scream and laugh and sing and make art — is as much a form of resistance as to fight.
For tickets and more info: jencloher.com/shows