Photo Credit: Nate Ryan
Minneapolis based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Ries aka Her Crooked Heart is about to embark on a UK tour in support of her recently released ‘To Love To Leave To Live’ album. To perform the music in a live setting Rachel has enlisted Siri Undlin (Humbird), Adelyn Strei (Adro) and Hilary James (We Are The Willows, Bathtub Cig) to fully capture the melancholy nature of the record via four-part harmonies and a wide mix of instrumentation both synthetic and acoustic. The dates include a show at Green Note in Camden which should prove the perfect environment for Rachel and her music. More about Her Crooked Heart including the full list of tour dates follow after the break:
Her Crooked Heart is the new name; the new music of Rachel Ries - multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, rock & roll choir director, sideman and singer. Her Crooked Heart’s new album, To Love To Leave To Live (released May 31st) features members of Bon Iver, Shane Leonard and string arrangements by the inimitable Rob Moose.
HER CROOKED HEART TOUR DATES
Thursday 20th June - The Stables, Milton Keynes
Saturday 22nd June - Old Refreshment Room, Wrington
Sunday 23rd June - Green Note, London
Monday 24th June - The Greystones, Sheffield
Tuesday 25th June - The Cobblestone, Dublin IE
Wednesday 26th June Roisin Dubh, Galway IE
Friday 28th June - Levis', Ballydehob IE
Saturday 29th June - No Alibis, Belfast NI
Sunday 30th June - The Doublet, Glasgow
Tuesday 2nd July - The Leith Depot, Edinburgh
Thursday 4th July - The Old Forge, Cranford – Kettering
Friday 5th July - Hyde Tavern, Winchester
Monday 8th July - The Hatch, Totnes
With To Love To Leave To Live, Minneapolis-based Her Crooked Heart presents a debut record unique in form, made up of cyclical narratives and intertwining histories, each informing the next. The result is a transformative song cycle, led by a charismatic personality, wholly indifferent to expectations of genre and instrumentation. Rachel Ries, the writer, multi-instrumentalist and producer behind Her Crooked Heart, demonstrates immense vulnerability and multifaceted musical craftsmanship to deliver a personal and profound musical soliloquy on love, leaving and the life that follows after burning it all down.
To bring these songs and this record to the stage (and to the UK for the first time with a full band) Ries has enlisted a powerful group of women; women who can, in their way, take on the feminine, humanist mantle of Her Crooked Heart and make it their own: Siri Undlin (Humbird), Adelyn Strei (Adro), Hilary James (We Are The Willows, Bathtub Cig). The quartet blends classical and electric guitar; piano and vintage synths, cello, woodwinds and drum triggers. This merging of acoustic and synthetic sounds is all in service of the voice: four park vocal harmonies that shift from ether to eat elemental wail, always telling a story of transformation.