GRAMMY-nominated singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Valerie June announces her new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, out April 11 via Concord Records, and releases its lead single Joy, Joy!alongside an accompanying video. Rooted in the belief that what we focus on is what we manifest, June dreams a songpath forward with Owls, Omens, and Oracles that leaves no one behind. Halfway through a decade of immense and rapid global change, June asserts a multidimensional Blackness steeped in laughter, truth, magic, delight, and interdependence. This album is a radical statement to break skepticism, surveillance, and doom scrolling – let yourself celebrate your aliveness. Connect, weep, change, open. Listen here and watch the video here. Pre-order the album here.
June has been softening and clarifying her sound since the 2013 release of Pushin’ Against A Stone, through The Order of Time, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, and Under Cover. “A willed and unblinking optimism courses through Valerie June’s songs” (New York Times); this newest work shows her own spiritual growth and the opening of ancestral channels into both her dynamic and distinct voice and her tender lyrics. June is not alone in crafting this sacred field for the contemplation of love and being human. Produced by M. Ward (Mavis Staples, She & Him) and engineered by Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis), Owls, Omens, and Oracles also features a cast of contributors, including The Blind Boys of Alabama and Norah Jones.
ValerieAn instant foot-stompin’ hip-shaker, lead single Joy, Joy! opens the album with an undeniable exuberance. June, playing acoustic guitar, sings: “And when you feel you’re not enough / Has this old been hard and rough / A golden seed beneath dark soil / To seek the sun is often rough” while backed by Kaveh Rastegar on bass (John Legend, Beck), Steven Hodges on drums (Tom Waits, David Lynch), and keys and horn arrangements by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band). In line with praise by the New Yorker, “[June’s] every quiver bespeaks emotional honesty.”
Reflecting on Joy, Joy!, June says: “Everyone has felt moments of darkness, depression, anxiety, stress, ailments, or pain. Some say it takes mud to have a lotus flower. This song reflects on the hard times we might face: to fail, to fall, to lose, to be held down, to be silenced, to be shut out yet still hold onto a purely innocent and childlike joy. I come from a heritage of ancestors who lived this truth by inventing blues music. Generations after they’ve gone, the inner joy they instilled in us radiates and lifts cultures throughout the world. From the world to home, what would a city council focused on inspiring inner joy for all of a town’s citizens look like?”
Owls, Omens, and Oracles is expansive, growing from June’s psychedelic folk, indie rock, Appalachian, bluegrass, country soul, orchestral pop, and blues root system into an intergalactic web of wisdom. Every single note she sings is dusted with her “unorthodox, howling tin-pan of a voice” (ELLE), “like raw silk–intimate, elegant and strong” (Garden & Gun). The visceral twists and fierce raw emotion of her voice threads textures and tones through the needle of a multi-genre American quilt. Gracefulness and gentleness harmonize with edginess and precarity, evoking a tenderness within even the hardest heart as June holds the complexity of “My life is a country song,”and “I am multidimensional, beyond category.”
June recently announced the Owls, Omens, and Oracles Tour, which kicks off the week after the album release and runs through late June. All shows are full band; a full list of dates can be found below, and tickets can be purchased here.
OWLS, OMENS, AND ORACLES TRACKLIST:
1. Joy, Joy!
2. All I Really Wanna Do
3. Endless Tree
4. Inside Me
5. Trust The Path
6. Love Me Any Ole Way
7. Changed feat. The Blind Boys of Alabama
8. Superpower
9. Sweet Things Just for You
10. I Am In Love
11. Calling My Spirit
12. My Life Is A Country Song
13. Missin’ You (Yeah, Yeah)
14. Love And Let Go
OWLS, OMENS, AND ORACLES TOUR DATES:
March 27 – Gettysburg, PA @ Majestic Theater
April 15 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
April 16 – Alexandria, VA @ The Birchmere Music Hall
April 17 – Richmond, VA @ The National
April 18 – Annapolis, MD @ Ram’s Head Onstage
April 19 – Annapolis, MD @ Ram’s Head Onstage
May 6 – New York, NY @ Town Hall
May 7 – Norwalk, CT @ District Music Hall
May 8 – Brownfield, ME @ The Stone Mountain Arts Center
May 9 – Albany, NY @ Swyer Theatre @ The Egg
May 10 – Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
May 11 – Boston, MA @ City Winery
May 27 – Ferndale, MI @ The Magic Bag
May 28 – Chicago, IL @ Park West
May 29 – Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium
May 30 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre
May 31 – Minneapolis, MN @ State Theatre
June 1 – Iowa City, IA @ The Englert Theatre
June 3 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi Annex
June 4 – Louisville, KY @ Headliners Music Hall
June 13 – San Diego, CA @ Music Box
June 14 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
June 15 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Lobero Theatre
June 17 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Rio Theatre
June 18 – San Francisco, CA @ Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
June 20 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
June 22 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
