Neil Gaiman, the celebrated author of esteemed novels such as Stardust, Coraline, American Gods, and Neverwhere, is entering the music scene with his first-ever album Signs of Life, full of original music, set for release on April 28, 2023, via Instrumental Recordings. The album is an extended collaboration with Australia’s FourPlay String Quartet, whom Gaiman had worked with before in 2010 when composing a soundtrack for Gaiman’s novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, with words, music, and backing vocals from Gaiman (Pitchfork).
When asked by Pitchfork why Gaiman chose to work with FourPlay String Quarter on his first album, the novelist noted the simplicity of a reduced orchestra playing louder and louder as it implies a sense of intimacy that makes the words of a poem seem even more powerful than it would have seemed when read aloud alone. He responds:
“I’m not entirely certain when I fell in love with a string quartet. I remember our first date, though. It was a day spent in a tiny room somewhere in the backstage maze of the Sydney Opera House. We played the next night on the stage of the Sydney Opera House. It was remarkable. It was so much fun we did it again. We did a tour together, but when we reached Carnegie Hall, we decided we needed something better than me reading a poem as our encore, so we stole some time from soundcheck and rehearsed a song. And then we performed our song on the Carnegie Hall stage, which felt a lot like something special. We started to build a repertoire, and when I was in Australia, we would make music together. These are some of the things we’ve made together. It’s been a long fallow winter, the last two and a half years. Here are signs of life.”
In preparation for the album’s release, Neil Gaiman has released two songs from his collaboration with the FourPlay String Orchestra: Credo” and “Bloody Sunrise,” the latter of which arrives with its own music video that depicts Laura Goodridge, who provides the lead vocals for the song, lying in a coffin before rising to perform in a graveyard with the rest of the quartet.
Check out the songs and the music video for “Bloody Sunrise” below.
Signs of Life:
01 Clock
02 Möbius Strip
03 Bloody Sunrise
04 The Wreckers
05 Song of the Song
06 Credo
07 Neverwhere
08 Poem First Read on January 26th, 2011, at the Sydney Opera House
09 The Problem With Saints
10 In Transit
11 Signs of a Life
12 Oceanic
Neil Gaiman also released a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy” for PEN America with Amanda Palmer in 2016.
Leave a Comment