Fabiana Palladino releases ‘I Can’t Dream Anymore’ the latest single taken from her highly anticipated self-titled debut album which is out on 5 April via Paul Institute / XL Recordings. Having premiered during the Radio Fabiana show on NTS yesterday, ‘I Can’t Dream Anymore’ is released today alongside a music video conceptualised by Fabiana and directed by Josh Renaut and Caroline Waxse. It places Fabiana aboard Radio Caroline ship-the world’s most famous pirate radio station during 60s and 70s-where her sense of longing exists in her isolation as she broadcasts out to the world. Speaking on the new music and forthcoming album,Fabiana Palladino says: I wrote I Can’t Dream Anymore in a period of the first lockdown where I was staying up too late, writing songs for the album alone and the intensity and unreality of everything started to affect my sleep. Everything felt very surreal and it reminded me of when i’ve been in the aftermath of big changes, those moments in life where everything shifts and you have to reconfigure yourself.
I listened to the shipping forecast during that time for comfort. I found it relaxing but the isolation I was feeling felt more romantic when I listened to it. I’d be playing this imagined, isolated version of myself out to sea, completely alone but connected to others by broadcasting my radio show from the ship late into the night which is how I connected with Radio Caroline for the video. A theme across the album is connection and disconnection. It’s something I’m fascinated by and the video represents it in a way which feels specific to ‘I Can’t Dream Anymore’
WATCH / LISTEN TO ‘I CAN’T DREAM ANYMORE’ HERE
PRE-ORDER / SAVE FABIANA PALLADINO HERE
Meanwhile, excitement continues to build for Fabiana Palladino’s long awaited self-titled debut album. Made in the wake of the end of a long relationship, it’s an intimate record that sees Fabiana Palladino confront complex questions about love, loneliness and normativity in relationships. The result is a 10-track full-length of shapeshifting sonics that draws inspiration from the big R&B, Soul, Pop and Disco studio productions of the 80s and 90s and filters them through a modern lens. Written and self-produced by Palladino, the album features performances from renowned musicians and close friends including Paul Institute co-founder Jai Paul, her father and legendary session bassist Pino Palladino, brother and Yussef Dayes bassist Rocco Palladino, renowned drummer Steve Ferrone and strings from Rob Moose.
Album Artwork: Fabiana Palladino by Nicola Delorme.
Fabiana Palladino
Fabiana Palladino
Paul Institute / XL Recordings
Friday 5 April 2024
Tracklist:
1. Closer
2. Can You Look In The Mirror?
4. Give Me A Sign
5. I Care
6. Stay With Me Through The Night
7. Shoulda
8. Deeper
9. In The Fire
10. Forever
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ABOUT FABIANA PALLADINO:
For more or less a brand-new artist, Fabiana Palladino faces an unusual level of anticipation. The London musician broke out in 2017 as one of the Paul Institute’s founding artists after her shadowy, classicist R&B influenced pop reached Jai Paul, who started the label alongside his brother A. K. Paul. Releasing just three singles in four years, she caught the ear of critics–Pitchfork likened ‘Mystery’ to “a scratch track from a big-budget 80s studio that’s been smuggled out on reel-to-reel tape”–but Palladino’s output remained slight while she worked as an in-demand session musician for the likes of SBTRKT and Jessie Ware, cycling from one tour to the next. This year, she formed part of Jai’s band for his live debut (which she also supported), the most wildly awaited performances in years.“I’m taking it one bit at a time because it is very strange and a bit overwhelming,” says Palladino. All the while, she was intensively working on her self-titled debut album-Fabiana Palladino-in secret. Written and produced by Palladino, it has been a long time coming, partially because of her playing commitments but also because of her perfectionism.“I have a horrible fear of putting something out and regretting it,” she admits. Covid slowed things too, amplifying the sense of loneliness and isolation that runs through the album, in which she confronts how a life should look in the absence of traditional relationship and family structures. Made in the wake of the end of a long relationship, it’s an intimate, after-dark record that exudes the toughness and femininity of Janet Jackson circa Control and Annie Lennox on DIVA, exerts the classic songwriting of Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell and subverts the classic romantic Motown duets of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell to unpick normativity in relationships. Palladino’s references are all big studio records, a sound that she strove for while self-recording at home and in the XL studio.“I wanted to push myself production-wise,” she says. “I wanted high-production value sounds because I grew up listening to music that was made in studios, played by great musicians and recorded by brilliant engineers, and I really appreciate that.” This sleek, distinctive record is testament to her growing confidence as a producer, encouraged, says Palladino, by Jai. Early on, she would send him demos and ask him to produce them.“He would say, ‘You’ve already produced it–it’s there.’Palladino’s dad, Pino Palladino, is one of history’s most famous session men: she learned from him the integrity it takes to work on other people’s ideas, and gradually understood how to apply it to her own work. “I like creating other people’s vision, being solid and consistent,” she says. “Being an artist is a totally different headspace.” It’s one that Palladino seems to conjure effortlessly. The self-titled album feels like a classic pop album: its nimble melodies hauntingand sensual, the writing elegantly whittled down to turn complex questions about desire and satisfaction into immediate hooks. “I’m getting closer / Still it’s on my mind / What we’re all about / ‘Cos I don’t even know if I want you around,” she sings on ‘Closer’,which gasps and glints as two would-be lovers dance around a grey area. “When I go to sleep I’m tired but I can’t dream any more,” she sings on ‘I Can’t Dream Anymore’, thrust forward by heaving bass that resonates with exhaustion and frustration at the uncertainty. “I had a significant relationship that ended followed by a period of a few years of like: what the hell am I doing?” she says. “People are getting married and having kids around you, and I was not in that at all. There’s a certain amount of pain in having to accept that that’s not the way it’s gone. But also: how can I embrace that and create power for myself? I feel amazing about it now, and so happy that my life has gone in that way.” Fabiana Palladino underscores that push and pull. “The songwriting is relatively traditional,” says Palladino,“but the production isn’t. It’s trying to disrupt certain expectations.” Palladino’s pop career is finally taking flight but that doesn’t mean the anticipation is over
