Baby Queen announces new album I Hope You Don’t Remember Me

Recorded in Los Angeles with producer Alex Casnoff, the record moves away from the pristine pop of her earlier work towards a blend of live instrumentation and synths, anchored by bassist Michael Shuman (Queens of the Stone Age) and drummer Carla Azar (PJ Harvey, Jack White). Latham describes the album as “a story about love, rejection, ego and shame told by an unreliable narrator whose understanding of love is warped.”

The writing process, the South African songwriter says, required a deliberate shift in approach. “When I began writing for this album, I was determined to be as present as possible which meant putting down any notion of the type of song I should be creating, and simply trusting that what naturally came out of me, was what was meant for me.” The result, she notes, was uncomfortable. “The songs I wrote seemed to reveal more about me than about the people or relationships I was writing about. A spotlight was shone into corners of myself I hadn’t looked at in a long time.”

The newly unveiled “Permanently Obsessed” is the fourth track to emerge from the record, following “Word Vomit”, “Feel Something”, and the title track. Latham explains that the single tackles a recurring pattern. “I have long had a habit of idealising a lover; turning them into a mythological creature sent to mirror my redeeming features and answer my many unanswerable questions, which is really just another form of self-avoidance and self-protection. This song is about a recurring pattern in my own behaviour that renders the identity of the lover redundant; something unhealed within me that yearns to recreate a particular dynamic.”

To mark the release, Baby Queen will play a nine-date run of UK in-store shows in July. The run begins at Truck in Oxford on 21 July, followed by dates at Rough Trade East (London), Resident (Brighton), Banquet at Fighting Cocks (Kingston), Rough Trade Bristol, Wax & Beans (Bury), Rough Trade Liverpool, Crash at Headrow House (Leeds) and Rough Trade Nottingham on 30 July. Ticket bundles go on sale today (26 June) at 10am for fans who pre-order the album from participating stores.

I Hope You Don’t Remember Me artwork