ARIEL BUI RELEASES NEW ALBUM REAL & FANTASY VIA AUDIO NETWORK
"Imagine a combination of Neko Case, Nico and maybe Nancy Sinatra at her most deadpan and you’ve got a vague idea of Ariel Bui's instantly identifiable approach…The best artists take the kinds of chances Bui displays consistently” - American Songwriter
“Ariel Bui is not a one-track artist. The…singer-songwriter is well-versed in the influence of worldly travel, having experienced life all over the South, but also in different music genres.” - Elmore Magazine
“reminiscent of the spark that Courtney Barnett has produced over the past few years.” - No Country For New Nashville
[October 14th, 2022] - Today, the Nashville based singer / songwriter Ariel Bui has released her newest studio LP Real & Fantasy via Audio Network. The music of Ariel Bui, who Ann Powers of NPR Music once described as "a psychedelic cowgirl cool rockabilly queen”, pulls from her wide ranging musical background as an artist and music educator, blending elements of indie rock, indie pop, country, soul, surf, and psych rock into a distinct sound that should instantly appeal to fans of artists like Angel Olsen and Courtney Barnett. This new album Real & Fantasy reunites Ariel with Grammy-nominated producer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff), with the entire new LP recorded at his Nashville studio, The Bomb Shelter. You can listen to the new album below:
The album and song title comes from a line in the song’s chorus: “Always on the edge of something real & fantasy”. Describing her inspiration for the lyric and why she ended up choosing this as the album’s title, Ariel says that she “loved the phrase Real & Fantasy for the title of the album, because unlike the more commonly used phrase ‘real or fantasy’ it kind of highlighted for me that life is a combination of reality AND our dreams.”
Following the release of lead single “Sixteen” - whose video was premiered via Nashville Scene - the album's title track “Real & Fantasy'' is also accompanied by a music video, recorded in Tokic’s Bomb Shelter Studio and featuring a team of seasoned Nashville musicians who helped bring this record to life – including Jo Schornikow (Phosphorescent) on Piano & Keys, Megan Coleman (Jenny Lewis, Yola) on drums, Jack Lawrence (Jack White, The Dead Weather) on bass, and Ellen Angelico (She’s A Rebel) on guitar. This studio performance not only highlights the stellar musicianship and warm indie rock sound that makes this record sound so rich sonically but also the undeniably compelling presence of Ariel herself as both a performer and songwriter.
While Ariel is proud to call Nashville home, she also proudly represents herself as a Vietnamese-American woman, and has been a vocal advocate for the Asian representation in the arts. She discusses this eloquently in a recently published essay titled “Where Are You From?” for DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network), in which she wrestles with the complicated tangle of feelings that comes with wanting to represent your cultural heritage without being tokenized.
Describing the process of trying to bridge that gap between her two identities on her new album Real & Fantasy, Bui writes: “Even though the subject matter does not explicitly speak of my Vietnamese American heritage, I think it’s the closest I’m going to get right now at bridging the gap between my Vietnamese and American roots, because it is rock’n’roll–like the rock’n’roll from the Vietnam War era I grew up listening to. While I was on a pilgrimage in Vietnam in 2019, I had a traditional áo dài tailored for me that is black and lacy, more like the classical and rock’n’roll concert attire I am accustomed to. It is this áo dài I am wearing on the cover of my latest album, Real and Fantasy”
Diving further into the themes and inspirations of Real & Fantasy, Bui sees this new record as “a sort of coming of age album for my 30s, with the story starting from my teenage years and concluding with the present day. I started with remembering what it was like to be young, experience hardships, have crushes, first loves, and fun. Throughout the journey, more adult themes slowly interweave throughout the story, whether it be the realities and responsibilities of ‘adulting’, the complications of how to define relationships that don’t fall within our societal norms, and exploring our identities, sexualities, and insecurities.”
Besides “Sixteen” and “Real & Fantasy”, non-single album highlights include the garage rock jam “Young Love”, the melancholy surf ballad “When I See You Again”, and the bluesy slow jam “Is It Me”. Album closer “Make It Through Another Day” – a jangly indie pop tune which is crucially the only track on Real & Fantasy written since the onset of the pandemic – closes the book on the album with grace. “Most of the songs were written prior to the pandemic and by the Spring of 2020,” Bui says, worrying at the time that “all these simple songs about love and sexuality felt trite in comparison to the widespread trauma and suffering that was happening all over the world.”
But what makes “Make It Through Another Day” and Real & Fantasy as a whole so compelling is the way the upbeat instrumental and positive message of the song doesn’t undercut the weight behind its sentiment or the darkness in the world that it openly acknowledges: “believe it or not, this too shall pass / just like everything else has / there’s love in the world and reasons to feel glad”. Having traversed through various states of anxiety and uncertainty across the album, Ariel arrives at a newfound sense of peace on this track; providing solace without resorting to easy answers or empty platitudes. As she describes the song & album herself, “The reality might be that the world may be falling apart, but that if you just use your imagination and remember that there truly are people out there who care about you and love you, we can make it through another day, survive this and come out stronger on the other side.”
Ariel Bui is a Nashville-based artist, activist & educator. Her sound strives to be classic yet subtly experimental, bridging a variety of musical genres & styles. American Songwriter has said her music “pushes all sorts of boundaries…The best artists take the kinds of chances Bui displays consistently”.
Though she has been writing & recording solo DIY records for decades (all available at arielbui.bandcamp.com), her most recent records are a collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray For The Riff Raff) recorded at the Bomb Shelter in East Nashville. Her latest release, Real & Fantasy, features a cast of talented musicians including Jo Schornikow (Phosphorescent), Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, Jack White), Megan Coleman (Yola, Jenny Lewis) & Ellen Angelico. Though Nashville Scene described her 2016 self-titled record as “a top-grade smorgasbord of contemporary Americana, from country-tinged R&B to psychedelic soul”, this latest album will display her more fun and rock’n’roll side.
Ariel Bui also runs Melodia Studio, a collective of teaching artists offering music lessons in Nashville, NYC, Taos & Worldwide online, where she teaches piano. She has worked with many social, racial & environmental justice organizations and is in the process of building an off-grid, self-sustainable, Earthship-inspired studio in Taos, New Mexico, which you can learn more about on her website. Bui says this new album Real & Fantasy reflects the sounds she associates with the many places she grew up, “whether surf-y and rock-y like Florida; expansive and spiritually ambient like New Mexico; or polished, professional, and diverse like Nashville.”
Real & Fantasy is out today via Audio Network and is available wherever you stream music
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