Gloria De Oliveira - The Lying Swans Gloria De Oliveira

After two albums on Sacred Bones, Gloria De Oliveira releases her third album on La Double Vie

Darkness can be revealing. Joy feels different after grief, sharper and clearer. Though allowing the light in again after desolation can be incredibly challenging, especially when the wounds of the past still haunt the present. The Lying Swans, Gloria de Oliveira’s third full length, explores this in depth, like a work of Gothic literary fiction set in motion by the image of a woman fleeing a haunted house; this central image also shaped the album's visual world. Produced by Randall Dunn (Anna von Hausswolff, Sunn O))), Marissa Nadler) and recorded between Iceland, New York and Berlin, the result is an oneiric world where enchantment and danger coexist.

“I numb my hurt one last time”, sings de Oliveira in the first single "Fading Faces", as a farewell to darker times. The ethereal lightness of the shimmering synth layers contrasts with thunderous drums and glam-rock inflected guitars. The resulting tension amplifies the song’s bittersweet beauty, fully embodied her siren voice, yearning and unguarded. The accompanying music video, directed by de Oliveira herself, depicts her stranded like a Pre-Raphaelite water nymph on a mystical Brazilian beach, between black cliffs and pink sand.

On "Fading Faces", Gloria de Oliveira offered "This is not only the first single, but also the very first piece of music I wrote when I started working on the album. It was also the first song that Randall Dunn and I later recorded together in Iceland. In many ways, it’s the reason the album even exists - ‘Fading Faces’ required me to allow myself this degree of vulnerability that permeates ‘The Lying Swans’. Musically, it still follows the tradition of my previous albums to some extent, while simultaneously drawing on new modes of expression.”