Australian indie-pop singer, songwriter and producer Gordi (aka Sophie Payten) has shared another new cut from her forthcoming album Like Plasticine. The latest track is PVC Divide and its a collaboration with Anaïs Mitchell.
Written, recorded and produced by Gordi, and featuring the beautiful, ethereal vocals of Anaïs Mitchell, PVC Divide offers a sonic snapshot of Gordi’s experiences working in hospitals during the COVID pandemic.
Gordi first met Anaïs Mitchell – the Vermont-based, Tony and Grammy award-winning creator of Broadway musical, Hadestown – a few years ago, while singing backing vocals together for Bon Iver on a Jimmy Fallon performance.
Since that meeting, their friendship has blossomed, now manifesting in the emotional, devastating ballad that is PVC Divide. Fittingly, Gordi will be joining Anaïs in New York as support for her show at Racket in Manhattan next week.
The track comes as Gordi wraps up her spring tour of the UK, which saw her play to full rooms at Dot To Dot Festival in Bristol and Nottingham, a variety of buzzy sets at The Great Escape in Brighton and a sold-out London show at Soho’s The Lower Third.
She has announced her return to Europe later this month, supporting Foster The People on their arena tour. Autumn dates in the UK and Europe will see her return for the Bryce Dessner curated Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival and Residency in Cork Ireland, alongside Reeperbahn Festival in Germany and a run of headline dates in Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and UK.
Take a listen to the new tune.
Next week, Gordi kicks off her east coast US dates. Alongside her show with Anais Mitchell, she will also play SummerStage in Central Park and headline shows in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
Debuting PVC Divide next week on stage with Anaïs has led Payten to reflect on the song’s origins. She says she drew on her time working as a doctor during the covid era.
“I spent the pandemic working as a doctor. These tiny planes at empty airports would take us to remote towns, to restaff hospitals that had been hit by covid. From the airport to a serviced apartment to the emergency room and so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat. I observed the grief of others until eventually it felt like my own.
“The lyrics are made up of stories I read, conversations I had, and feelings I tried to contain. They finally spilled over the day I wrote this – I was in the middle of a room called Phoenix Central Park in Sydney and I started playing this guitar line and the words came quickly. I made a drum loop and let it echo around the space, then I started recording and sat down at the piano and just played. It was all captured that day. This song is hard for me to listen to sometimes, but it holds a special place.”
‘PVC Divide’ was specifically inspired by one of the patients Payten cared for whilst working on the frontline. While in rehab following the removal of a brain tumour, he had a new scan that revealed an aggressive return.
“He’d been getting better, and the plan for him was to go home and move on with his life. And then it turned out he had five new tumours in his brain. That was the end for him. And I had to tell him that without his family there.”
PVC Divide touches on one of the central themes of Like Plasticine – the fragility of the human existence – and highlights the duality of Payten’s own life, with her two professions split in an almost perverse way, between a healthcare professional who needs to shut off the emotional valve and the songwriter whose job it is to flood the room.
Like Plasticine will be released on August 8 via Mushroom Music.
Source: Media Release.
