Bedouine (aka Azniv Korkejian) has announced a new album, Neon Summer Skin, and releases its first single, “Long Way to Fall,” with an accompanying music video. Today’s single centers on a conversation between Korkejian and a family member struggling with addiction. Her new album, Neon Summer Skin, tells the story of family and upbringing as Azniv mourns the end of her childhood and reflects on feeling a sense of safety long before one can fully understand its meaning.
An album that explores this evolution and eventual separation of family, whether due to political tumult or personal ambitions, as an attempt to accept that with each generation, life is a lesson in letting go.
“For my 20s and much of my 30s, I couldn’t sit still,” Bedouine reflects. “I was so curious about my own independence that it just didn’t occur to me for the longest time to mourn the past. But after that trip to Saudi Arabia, I came home and was so devastated. I couldn’t place the feeling immediately, but as I started writing, I realized I was processing that I wasn’t ready to stop being somebody’s kid.”
“I felt so frustrated about the places that I’m from becoming war torn or difficult to return to,” she says. “My family has been split apart time and time again, immigrating between Armenia, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. I wanted to document and honor my family’s stories.”
Neon Summer Skin is Bedouine’s fourth album, the follow-up to 2021’s Waysides, which was co-produced with her longtime collaborator, Gus Seyffert, and was written with the sweet pop melodies she intentionally returned to the instruments she played as a child. Instruments she begrudgingly practiced daily due to my mom’s militant approach, or some she started at elementary school, the result is a fuller, more playful sound, at times grand and orchestral, shimmery and surreal, inflected with bits of psychedelia, bossa nova, and jazz.
“I was feeling lonely for their company. I wanted so badly for us to show up for each other like we had when we were younger and things were more simple, ” she says “For me it represents the difference between a close sibling-like relationship at a very young age versus one as adults. It’s no longer as simple as roughhousing one minute and playing the next. It’s more delicate. You have to respect each other’s space even when you’d rather shake someone awake.”
Neon Summer Skin will be available June 5th.
Photo Credit: Janell Shirtcliff
Neon Summer Skin Tracklist
1. On My Own
2. Long Way To Fall
3. Always On Time
4. One Thing Right
5. Neon Summer Skin
6. Canopies (Intro)
7. Canopies
8. Deghma Cheega
9. Na Na Na
10. White Patent Leather
11. Canopies (Solo Piano)
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