Amanda Palmer announces new single Voicemail for Jill, the latest track from her forthcoming solo album There Will Be No Intermission, out March 8.
Voicemail for Jill is a searing and stark, classically-tinged piano song inspired by Palmer’s lifelong role as both pro-choice activist and confidant for women (and men) who have gone through the complicated, often-hidden experience of choosing to have an abortion. The song - penned after a tour landed her in Dublin during the landmark referendum to legalize abortion - had been gestating for ages in her pile of song-drafts and was a “white whale of songwriting” according to Palmer, who has herself had three abortions and has “struggled for years to find the right way to write about the subject without sentimentality, preachiness or apology.”
“I wrote this song as a gift, a handbook,” Palmer says, “for any woman on her way to have an abortion, and as a reminder that this is not an experience you have to face alone.”
Voicemail for Jill was recorded in Los Angeles with GRAMMY-winning producer/engineer John Congleton, showcases Palmer on piano and vocals and features additional synthesizer and programming by Max Henry of the Canadian indie band Suuns.
Amanda Palmer’s first solo album in more than six years, There Will Be No Intermission is now available for presale in multiple formats from nointermission.amandapalmer.net and will be released on March 8th. Alongside the album, Palmer is independently releasing an artbook of narrative photography to accompany the album’s release, which is also available for order on her website. Palmer’s third solo LP, There Will Be No Intermission is the multi-faceted artist’s most powerful and personal collection to date, with songs that tackle the big questions: life, death, grief and how we make sense with it all. While the themes may be dark, the album’s overall sonic and lyrical mood is one of triumph in the face of life’s most ineffably shitty circumstances. An album comprised of a staggering 20 tracks, 10 of these are original songs complemented by 10 instrumental vignettes. “Most of these songs were exercises in survival,” says Palmer. “This isn’t really the record that I was planning to make. But loss and death kept happening in real-time, and these songs became my therapeutic arsenal of tools for making sense of it all.” Recorded over a single month in Los Angeles by John Congleton (who previously engineered and produced 2012’s acclaimed Theatre Is Evil), There Will Be No Intermission was entirely crowd-funded, this time by over 14,000 patrons using Palmer’s community hub on Patreon. In addition to the LP, Palmer has partnered with the collaborative art-team Kahn & Selesnick (along with LA-based photographer Allan Amato and Iceland-based Artist Stephanie Zakas) to create a companion volume with over 60 theatrical photographic portraits taken mostly in and around the upstate New York home Palmer shares with her husband, writer Neil Gaiman. The portfolio - also titled There Will Be No Intermission – is available on her website and will also be sold at her hugely anticipated world tour, set to circle theatres around the globe in 2019-2020.