LIA KURI ANNOUNCES SOLO ALBUM MOTHERLAND OUT OCTOBER 25, 2024
Lia Kuri (Afternoon Bike Ride) announces her solo album Motherland, out October 25, 2024. Alongside the announcement, she shares the lead single “Cyclone”
Speaking of the track, Kuri says,
“Cyclone is a song that I channeled a lot of anger into. Mother Earth is calling out humans’ entitlement to her body here. I feel like the female form has been ogled over, visually exploited, physically exploited, it’s an angry ode to this incessant taking from a woman’s body, or rather, incessant giving that’s expected from women.
When you’re the source of someone’s life, it’s a lot of giving and sometimes you have to give up on giving in order to protect yourself. When the person you love is the cause of your destruction or the taker of your peace, you can either let them consume you or break free. I’ve changed the way I approach relationships in my life over the last couple of years as I’ve realized what my needs are and how to protect my peace. If Mother Earth could speak, I imagine she would relate.”
Motherland is an electrified open letter to our dying planet. A gleaming beacon of urgent light saying, “Breathe. Keep going. Heal. Please.” “I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of Mother Earth,” says Lia, of her debut album, “but it’s as much an album about the climate crisis as it is about motherhood and the maternalization I’ve experienced in my life.”
Having released a past solo EP in 2019, Motherland remains Lia’s first full-length offering. A long-form listen of both heartbreak and help and healing. Seeing debilitation in its many forms and making art amidst the continued struggle.
“As an only child,” says Lia, “I’ve had to caretake for my mother through cancer and my father through Alzheimer’s. Both of these experiences greatly marked me. I think there’s also a sort of self-maternalization that happened since I became accustomed to this role.”
Her heavy lyrical content swirls through synth flutters and hard-hitting drums, making for a captivating contrast. Dystopian and dreamy. Ambient layers and atmospheric backdrops with piano ballads, downtempo electronica, and drum and bass. The influences of James Blake and Frou Frou ooze through these tracks. Think Låpsley, FKA Twigs, Kllo, Caroline Polachek.
With a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, with parents as nature lovers, and a couple of Earth Day posters in her childhood bedroom, the environment has been a life-long focus for Lia. How fitting that listening to this album feels like watching a garden grow. A field becomes a forest. Removing a sword wrapped in vines in order to help heal the planet. Somber, reflective, strong, empowering. The disappointment in the decline of climate is contrasted with urgency and determination and a message of sincerity.
More than just a strong message, Lia is routing 10% of her artist revenue to conservation organizations (one for Canadian wildlife and one for the Amazonian rainforest).
“I’m trying to create a model for other artists to use their art to benefit causes they care about.”