“Fullbrook articulates a hunger for freedom and agency, but speaks from within the confines of a cynical, jagged awareness of the world, whiplashing back and forth between the raw intimacy of someone like Olsen or Van Etten, and a kind of detached, prophetic folk-bard wisdom.” – Stereogum
Tiny Ruins are releasing their third album Olympic Girls on February 1st, 2019 via Ursa Minor. After sharing the lead single of the same name, Tiny Ruins has now shared ‘School of Design’. It was recorded live, with the full band of Cass Basil on bass, Alex Freer on drums and Tom Healy on electric guitar in their hometown of Auckland. ‘School of Design’ is an achingly haunting refrain, inspired by a moment of reflection on tour.
Fullbrook reflects on the songs origins, “The lyrics came from a real experience where I did find myself wandering around an empty design school in a foreign city while on tour. That’s where the imagery of the fresh white paint on the walls and the ‘archives’ comes from, as that’s what I saw there. I wrote the song maybe two years later. You draw from experiences to articulate other feelings, other thoughts…a cinematic image that you know well is used to give life to something else, another feeling altogether.
Listen / Download Tiny Ruins’ “School of Design”
Bandcamp
Spotify
Apple Music
iTunes
“It’s a song about systems, about the confining nature of systems, and wanting to find a new way. It was written quickly, and I loved the guitar part from the get go, but I resisted its lyrics for a while – I felt it was too similar to another song of mine – “Me at the Museum, You in the Wintergardens” which is also about an institution, and about escaping from regimented regime. But in the end, I became happy with it.”
Album three, Olympic Girls, was produced by bandmate Tom Healy. Patiently built in the same underground lair (Paquin Studios at The Lab in hometown Auckland) as their previous record Brightly Painted One. Whereas that was recorded in three short weeks, the new album was made over a drawn out period of spontaneity and experimentation spanning a year, stridently reaching beyond Fullbrook’s formerly minimalist domain. Olympic Girls will be released on LP, CD and digitally on February 1st, 2019 as an independent release on Ursa Minor (NZ), Milk! Records (AU), Ba Da Bing (U.S.) and Marathon Artists (UK / EU).
Watch the official video for ‘Olympic Girls’ below.
Watch the official video for ‘How Much’ below.
– Q Magazine
“She is always looking uneasily toward the next line, or moving toward mysticism. In sentimental contexts, she generates lines of wicked ambition.”
– The New York Times
“As a lyricist Fullbrook is both conversational and a storyteller. But the amount of sound she is able to get out of her guitar is what makes her mesmerising.”
– Since I Left You
