SOAK – death valley fridge magnet
Bridie Monds-Watson is back with “death valley fridge magnet”, their first solo song in over four years. It’s the follow-up to 2022’s If I Never Know You Like This Again, and it arrives a year after “just stand there”, their collaboration with Fred again.. that’s racked up more than 25 million streams. SOAK is on Rough Trade now, and the song builds slowly: airy acoustic guitar and plaintive piano at the start, growing into a fuzzed-out, shimmering close by the end.
What makes the writing work is how mismatched the two people in it are. One’s out saving whales, the other’s driving a tour van. They’re calling each other from random truck stops, somewhere in the Bible Belt, somewhere that doesn’t even have a name worth mentioning. The Death Valley T-shirt and fridge magnet aren’t really about Death Valley at all, they’re shorthand for a relationship that doesn’t need shared interests or even shared geography to hold. You can have nothing in common and still be the person someone calls from the middle of nowhere. Monds-Watson wrote the song while dealing with vocal issues that had them questioning whether they’d keep making music at all. That uncertainty doesn’t come through as despair so much as a need to take stock of who actually sticks around. “I realised how precious and treasured my friendships are,” they’ve said, “and how my friends remind me of who I am faster than anything else.”
What gets me is the chorus: “never gonna let you forget” repeats until it stops sounding like a promise and starts sounding like a plea. The vocal sits just above the noise building underneath it, which is the whole trick of the song. It never gets buried, but it never feels fully steady either.
SOAK plays an Irish headline run this summer, a sold-out London show, and a support slot for Pulp at Rough Trade’s 50th anniversary event, before heading to the US this fall with The Barr Brothers.
Tour dates:
Europe:
- Jun. 29 / Waterford, Ireland / Luca Records & Decks
- Jun. 30 / Kinsale, Ireland / Prim’s Bookshop
- Jul. 1 / Clonakilty, Ireland / De Barra’s Folk Club
- Jul. 3 / Waterville, Ireland / Tech Amergin
- Jul. 4 / Ballydehob, Ireland / Levis Corner House
- Jul. 5 / Dingle, Ireland / The Green Room
- Jul. 7 / Galway, Ireland / Roisin Dubh
- Jul. 11 / Termon, Ireland / Glenveagh Inn
- Jul. 17 / London, UK / Third Man Records, The Blue Basement (sold out)
- Jul. 18 / London, UK / Royal Festival Hall, supporting Pulp (sold out)
North America:
- Oct. 28 / Brattleboro, VT / The Stone Church (with The Barr Brothers)
- Oct. 29 / New York, NY / Bowery Ballroom (with The Barr Brothers)
- Oct. 30 / Providence, RI / The Met (with The Barr Brothers)
