Dragonette’s new album ‘Twennies’ is due out this autumn.
Following a six-year break between records, electro pop artist Martina Sorbara has announced the outfit’s new project and shared its title track.
She says: “This song is about the push and pull of progress versus nostalgia, which is present in the instrumentation as well: a house track with an acoustic drum solo!
“Everyone has a point that they let go of the new world, hold on to what is familiar and let progress carry on without them. I think about that a lot. I have a lot of nostalgia for earlier times, life without the crazy frantic energy of what the digital/social media age has wrought.
“But I also have a genuine excitement about current and future knowledge/progress/technical and scientific discoveries. ‘Twennies’ is the internal collision of those two polarities.”
On the album, she works with one creative partner for the entire project – Los Angeles-based producer Dan Farber – with Martina explaining: “I’ve never concentrated on working on an album like that; just living and breathing this one thing.
“It’s a true hybrid of my original influences as a child and what I’ve learned along the way. It feels so representative of my musical journey,” she adds. “It’s my favourite thing I’ve ever done. I’m so proud of it.”
Speaking in the October 2022 issue of Retro Pop, Martina – who released the single New Suit earlier this year – reflected on how welcoming her son in 2018 affected her outlook, revealing: “It took me a long time. For a while, I couldn’t even combine those two areas of me – being an artist, singer, performer and being a mum. Those were very different things; it just did not overlap at all.
“I couldn’t figure out how to blend those things or if I was allowed to be a mum. It took a long time to be like, ‘Oh, these things coexist and this is who I am.’ I don’t know how it’s affected my songwriting, but it must have. I just don’t know how…”
For the musician, it was a transition akin to starting over, as she compares the lifestyle change to her early years in music.
“I started out in Dragonette just figuring out who I am and at the beginning it was like really putting on an act: ‘I’m crazy and flamboyant!’,” she muses. “And then slowly, I think I learned that the most important thing to represent is myself.
“When I had a kid, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to authentically represent that part of me.’ I think that has to do with the fact that there’s not a lot of women in music representing themselves as mums.
“It’s not like we don’t see it; it’s just like, we love young 18-year-old girls and as soon as they turn into the other thing – which is not 18 and mums, all that kind of stuff – the media at large pays significantly less attention to what they’re saying and what they’re doing.
“So, I think because I didn’t see a lot of that reflected back at me, I didn’t know how to do it and it took me a while to figure it out.”
‘Twennies’ is out October 28 and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the October 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
