The Orielles – Tears Are
Manchester three-piece The Orielles have shared “Tears Are”, the latest single from their fourth studio album Only You Left, out March 13 on Heavenly Recordings. Produced by long-time collaborator Joel Anthony Patchett, the album was recorded between Hamburg and Hydra — the car-free Greek island — and that contrast runs through everything. Esmé Dee Hand-Halford describes it as “wood versus metal”: Hamburg was metal, Hydra was wood, and the material sorted itself into those categories naturally.
“Tears Are” works as a title precisely because it doesn’t finish the sentence. Esmé frames it as an unanswered question: “You could think of something deeply human. But you could also answer it in a completely linguistic sense and think of a tear as a symbol or an image”. That ambiguity carries through into the music itself. It starts catchy and anthemic, then gradually pulls apart toward the end — the original motif returning in a darker, more minor form. It doesn’t feel like a collapse so much as a reframing.
The band — Esmé (bass & vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums & vocals), and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar & vocals) — are seven years on from their debut Silver Dollar Moment (2018). We covered the double-single “You are Eating a Part of Yourself” / “To Undo the World Itself” back in Week 02 — read that piece here.
Tour Dates Europe:
- February 20 – Hebden Bridge, UK – The Trades Club (SOLD OUT)
- March 13 – Manchester, UK – Piccadilly (in-store)
- March 14 – Leeds, UK – Jumbo (in-store)
- March 15 – Sheffield, UK – Bear Tree (in-store)
- March 16 – Liverpool, UK – Jacaranda (in-store)
- March 17 – Bristol, UK – Rough Trade (in-store)
- March 18 – Brighton, UK – Resident (in-store)
- March 19 – London, UK – Rough Trade East (in-store)
- June 19 – London, UK – ICA (performing in the round)
- August 1 – Hackthorpe, UK – Kendall Calling Festival
