Alabaster DePlume

Manchester-born, London-based songwriter, saxophonist, poet and orator Alabaster DePlume has announced a new album – ‘Come With Fierce Grace‘ – as well as the album’s lead single ‘Did You Know‘, which features the hauntingly beautiful vocals of Momoko Gill (aka MettaShiba). Following a run of European shows opening for Bon Iver, Alabaster’s tour dates continue to expand, including a show at Metronome.

‘Come With Fierce Grace’ is a collection of tracks drawn from the same sessions as Alabaster’s much-lauded double LP GOLD (which was a Pitchfork ‘Best New Music’ in April of 2022, and included in ‘Best Albums of 2022’ lists by NPR Music, Pitchfork, The Guardian and MOJO). Rather than a collection of B-sides, it’s a continuation of the organic collaborative and improvisational process that he established… almost as if GOLD has grown a new limb or aged into a new phase.

On the album’s lead single ‘Did You Know’, singer and drummer Momoko Gill takes the key poem from GOLD and translates it into her own lyrics. Gill had already delivered the message of the poem and sang it across tons of shows with Alabaster – but with her performance on ‘Did You Know’ she lays out her own meaning for the words. In the background of ‘Did You Know’, you hear Alabaster playing the key melody that accompanied the original poem on GOLD; but here the feeling is re-established by the improvisers who were recreating the arrangement in the moment, purely for the sake of enjoying each other at the time.