New album Black Heart out 13 January 2023
“Kamikaze Angels”, Miriam Clancy's first release in three years is a soaring, rousing song, a nod to the 90s through a lens of 2020 clarity. The song oscillates between loud-quiet-loud moments, the chorus rising to a hook, a powerful sing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs moment. Miriam says, "The chorus sings itself, propelling up to a maximum finish. And my beautiful wildling kids sing the last line with me which allows a fleeting childlike approach to the world, as it's always better seen that way. I love this song, it feels naked and alive, primal. And unafraid like pulling a thorn from an angry lion's paw."
Announcing her new album with the release of Kamikaze Angels sets the stage for the subsequent releases leading up to Miriam's new record, Black Heart. "To lead with this song feels like a show of cards, a challenge: it declares how I will proceed to address the dark stuff on my album, the arcs and depths of big feelings and horror," she says.
Miriam wrote Kamikaze Angels after moving from New Zealand to Queens NY, when she was finding her feet in a new land, caught between two countries and feeling at a loss. She found it hard to step outside. Contemplating her depression, she saw that picking the wrong path leads to a worse array of options, and on it goes - until you find yourself unrecognisable. The frequent global suicide bombings, New York-based hate crimes and frightening political movements in America mobilised her. She says "I was thinking about the origins and the path of a terrorist and their co-option, corrupted and weaponized for a cause, which seemed to be usually through an immense vacuum of need for meaningful connection and to be seen, heard, to belong. From one human grappling with an untethered feeling of emotional exile to another who may be weighing up their paths, I wrote this song for you."
Kamikaze Angels drops on Wednesday 26 October 2023 across all streaming services.
The video for Kamikaze Angels was filmed around the city in Minneapolis, where there were still palpable pockets of the George Floyd protests, signs and murals on the walls, calling for change. It was heavy and immediate, like being in the eye of a storm.
This sense of uprising and social justice aligned with what Miriam could best channel from growing up as a GenX in New Zealand, from the 1990s - the scene at skateparks.
Miriam says, "I am an average skateboarder myself and love how anti-establishment skating is, so when Rubens de Mello (director) suggested a skatepark, I was down. There is something refreshing and righteous about the 90's alternative scene I came up in that I am thrilled to throw back to; there's a raw approach in the emotion and language of the music that I love. Also, as I'm a Gen X slacker, I am ok with not fitting in, so whatever."
The bridge section of Kamikaze Angels features the head stocking and dripping paint, emulating how it would feel to extract yourself from the toxic mindset laid out in the song. "It took an eternity and 15 shampoos to get the black paint out my hair, which was quite alarming," she says. But she got there in the end, and the result of the shoot is a magnificent homage to 90s alternative music through a 2022 lens of a Generation X songwriter extraordinaire.