Berlin via Milwaukee indie pop/folk singer-songwriter Queen Quail announces her resonant, haunting debut EP, Narcissus, due out November 18, alongside a gently gripping first taste of the project, “Last Night.” Over six tracks, she explores longing, identity, philosophy and the search of home over swirling production and touching vocals.
“Last Night” explores mortality and the strangeness of inhabiting a body. Recalling its early stages, Queen Quail shares the track emerged from, “a memory I have of being close to falling asleep and then hearing the phone ring and my mom getting the news that her father had passed away. It’s also about how hard it is to have a body, and about the dream world versus the real, embodied world.” It was further fleshed out after playing a show with Dan English of Porches who encouraged her to be a touring guitarist.
The forthcoming sweeping Narcissus EP tells a story of resilience, self-discovery and overcoming. Produced by David Thornton, mixed by Michael Kümper, and mastered by Huntley Miller (Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso), the concise project weaves dreamy, shimmering production with matter-of-fact storytelling, sometimes touching on heavier topics, but consistently maintains her truth and raw humanity. The artist says, “Writing these songs was my way of trying to figure out who I was becoming, and how to use my own voice without losing myself.”
These obsessive, solitary writing sessions became a refuge during a relationship that really shook her. She adds, “Around that time I was also reading a lot of Freud, Lacan, and philosophy, which definitely slipped into the lyrics and the way I thought about memory, love, and the unconscious, and how capitalism plays into this. What started as a very private practice slowly turned into a kind of reckoning with the choices I’d made in my twenties.”
Turning years of bedroom writing into something tangible, Queen Quail shares, “At its core, this record is both a mirror and a map, looking back at doubt and transformation, but also pointing toward what comes next.”
