Shura shares new single ft. Cassandra Jenkins | new album 30/05

Today, British singer-songwriter and producer Shura shares her new single Richardson ft. New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins. It is the second single taken from her recently announced album I Got Too Sad For My Friends, to be released on May 30th via Play It Again Sam.

A lyric on Richardson cuts to the core of the album’s solitary feeling. “I got too down around my friends,” Shura sings over a laid-back groove adorned with soft guitar licks and flurries of keys. It was the first song written for the record, and it was also — by circumstance, but also fittingly — the first song she’s written at home alone on an acoustic guitar since she was a kid. Featuring Cassandra Jenkins, whose album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature was one of the few Shura could listen to during that period of high stress, the track brings her sadness full circle; Jenkins’ voice accompanying hers in lush harmony the same way it did back then.

Shura says:

“I fell in love with Cassandra's record at a low point in my life. It felt like an armchair I could crawl into. It accompanied me on long walks I took around my apartment in Greenpoint. I always knew I wanted to work with Cassandra on something. After a few conversations it became obvious to the both of us that it had to be this song. That Cassandra would accompany me here. A song about walking, thinking, and trying to find comfort somewhere, as Cassandra’s voice accompanied me on those walks then.”

Cassandra Jenkins says:

“I was drawn to Richardson because it captures a mood that's hard to place, in part because it's so much about place, and a kind of limbo we bring with us wherever we go. I love that this collaboration developed into a meta conversation between me and Shu about the ways we communicate with our loved ones when we are apart, whether by circumstance, time, or geography. It makes me think we were cosmic pen pals long before we ever met.”

Listen to Richardson HERE

Pre-order the new album I Got Too Sad For My Friends HERE

The years since her last album forevher have been turbulent in ways both good and bad. Shura became a pro-streamer, played Baldur's Gate 3 (twice), and made the Love Lies Bleeding-influenced decision to become a muscle mommy. On the flipside, the pandemic forced her to abandon the forevher tour midway and knocked her sense of identity in the process. Music became too painful to listen to. Living in New York and separated from family, she began pre-grieving for her loved ones while having a very real health scare of her own. She was physically isolated from friends, and felt emotionally isolated by them in turn.

Though it’s an album rooted in themes of depression and loneliness, I Got Too Sad For My Friends is far from downcast, it’s an album that stays fully present in its feelings and plunges its fingers into the earth – even when it can be painful to do so. Produced by Luke Smith (Foals, Shygirl, Depeche Mode) and featuring collaborations with the aforementioned Cassandra Jenkins, Becca Mancari and Helado Negro, it retains Shura’s usual crystalline sound and precision while introducing a different kind of warmth and earthiness.

Across the last decade, Shura has achieved critical acclaim and a devoted fanbase with the brooding synth-pop of her 2016 debut, Nothing’s Real, a coming-of-age debut which captured the intensity of young heartbreak and queerness, and the aforementioned forevher (2019), which explored the euphoria of love and connection with its soulful and expansive bounce. She has performed at some of the biggest festivals in the world including Glastonbury, Primavera Sound and Coachella, sold-out historic London venues such as The Roundhouse, Koko and Kentish Town Forum and supported the likes of Tegan and Sara and M83 on tour. She’s collaborated with an esteemed and eclectic array of artists including Mura Masa, Tracey Thorn, Rosie Lowe, with remixors re-interpreting her music from Four Tet, Tourist, Warpaint, Jungle, Factory Floor, Prins Thomas and Lindstrom and Jono Ma. Shura’s global streams stand at over 200 million and her music has been used in TV phenomenons like Heartstopper and Sex Education.

The artwork for I Got Too Sad For My Friends depicts Shura sitting alone on a mountainside, dressed in a baggy jumper, ripped jeans, Converse, and various pieces of armour that fail to cover her vital organs. Part Kurt Cobain, part Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo Juliet. The image captures everything about the album, which documents a rocky period of sadness and isolation in pastoral terms. Its warm blend of chamber pop, sixties folk and campfire Americana builds the singer’s acutely introspective songwriting out into a vast landscape. ‘I Got Too Sad For My Friends’ reveals a candid and deeply vulnerable new chapter in Shura’s evolving artistry, stay tuned for more.