Orla Gartland announces new studio album Everybody Needs A Hero out Oct 4, shares new single ‘The Hit’
PRAISE FOR Orla Gartland
“Conquering the internet might have been enough for a less ambitious artist, but for Gartland it was just the start”
“It was impossible not to immediately fall in love with Orla Gartland’s music”
“There's a refreshing frankness to the way she describes dating an emotionally-repressed man, becoming obsessed with a friend of a friend and finding solace in the sobering reality that her problems aren't unique”
“What sets Gartland apart is her honest songwriting and her contagious energy on a live stage”
“A varied and emotionally direct collection of alt-pop that mirrors the ups and downs of her journey, alluding to personal events without dissecting them to the point where they lose their wider resonance”
“Her writing captures the hard-won perspective of a life sandwiched between the online extremes of hatred and hero worship with an ironic awareness that she – like all of us – nonetheless still falls for all the snares of self-comparison”
“A headlong dive into twentysomething life”
“Joyously defiant”
ORLA GARTLAND
Everybody Needs A Hero LP
Oct 4 via New Friends
PRE-SAVE / PRE-ORDER HERE
‘The Hit‘ is out now, buy/stream it here.
Orla Gartland today announces her second studio album Everybody Needs A Hero, due for release on Friday 4th October via her own label New Friends. With the news comes the release of her latest single, ‘The Hit’ out now. LISTEN TO ‘THE HIT’ HERE + PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE LP HERE.
Everybody Needs A Hero explores how Gartland shapeshifts through the currents of a long term relationship and works out how to take up space in a postfeminist world. She explores the idea of a ‘hero’: someone to look up to, someone to rescue us from ourselves, someone we use to deflect from our own shadow self.
The album came to life between her London studio and the creative sanctuary of Middle Farm Studios in Devon. With Gartland on a constant quest to push herself as a writer and producer, she captained the ship during the writing and recording processes, with strong direction right through to the mixing and mastering. She worked with longtime collaborators Tom Stafford and Peter Miles in co-producing the album, inspired by each producers’ digital and analogue approaches.
Everybody Needs A Hero will feature already released singles ‘Little Chaos’, ‘Mine’, ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’ and today’s album highlight ‘The Hit’, showcasing a slightly softer side to the record. ‘The Hit’ taps into the good and bad of feeling deep empathy for another, when you’re so close to somebody that you take on their struggles and start to become the same person. Gartland describes the relationship in question as “like a voodoo doll thing… you’re so connected it hurts,” Orla explains “it’s a nice gesture, because you’re admitting you care about that person so much that when they’re in pain you feel it too, but there’s a point that it can go too far and that’s just not healthy or sustainable.”
Gartland has also announced her first ever headline tour of North America, taking place this November. The thirteen date tour sees her take in stops across the US and Canada, including New York’s Bowery Ballroom and LA’s Troubadour. All tour dates bar one sold out on the first day of being on sale, please find full list of dates here.
Bold, brash and increasingly self-assured, Dublin-born, London-based artist and producer Orla Gartland ushers in a new chapter for 2024 with ‘Little Chaos’, and now ‘Mine’. A testament to her artistic growth, burgeoning confidence and fastidious sense of independence, these releases are the latest milestone in this self-made talent’s journey. From career streams nudging towards a quarter of a billion, sold-out tours and festival appearances at Glastonbury and Latitude; to her Top 10 critically acclaimed self-released debut album Woman On The Internet; taking in a huge viral hit ‘Why Am I Like This’, (700 million views and nearly 400,000 TikTok creations, and counting); and through to last year joining musical forces with longtime friends dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown to release The Secret To Life as new band FIZZ.
Amassing a dedicated fan-base and creative community including her notable ‘Secret Demo Club’, Orla has forged an even deeper relationship with her fans as she unveils her work-in-progress tracks, some of which have gone on to feature on the upcoming second record. Her brutal honesty and pragmatic realism have always been present in her songwriting but become even more prominent when paired with the louder, more angular alternative sound Orla has embraced this time around. Orla’s debut album Woman On The Internet charted in the top 10 of the UK Official Charts, at #3 in the Irish Album Charts and was nominated for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year 2021. The culmination of many years honing her songwriting and production skills, the record was praised by the likes of The Observer (“This beautifully crafted debut spans pop-punk to indie rock, with knife-sharp lyrics all the way”), NME (“a hard-won celebration of perseverance and artistic freedom”) and many more. Stay tuned for much more in 2024.
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