“A boldly romantic, optimistic triumph of a second album” – The Line of Best Fit, 9/10
“…a time capsule of powerful, healthy, all-consuming love, undoubtedly a huge victory for any queer person.” – Paper
“Spacey, super-melodic, immaculately produced…casts a wonderful spell.” – Observer ****
Shura has announced a deluxe version of her acclaimed 2019 album forevher, which will be released on the 19th March via Secretly Canadian. Alongside the announcement, Shura has shared the unreleased track ‘obsession’.
Pre-order/pre-save forevher Deluxe Edition: https://shura.ffm.to/forevher-dlx
forevher Deluxe Edition will be released digitally (with a limited run of cassettes to be released at a later date), featuring the eleven original album tracks with nine extras. These include acoustic versions of five album tracks – recorded and produced with Sam Evian and featuring Hannah Cohen on backing vocals, previous Bandcamp single ‘magazine launch (demo)’, last year’s collaborative single ‘elevator girl’ featuring Ivy Sole and two unreleased tracks including ‘obsession’.
On ‘obsession’, Shura explains:
‘obsession was one of the songs I wrote whilst I was writing forevher. I always wanted it to be a duet between two women but it never came to fruition during the recording process. Then, when I toured forevher in Europe, Rosie Lowe came with us and we’d always spoken about wanting to collaborate on something together and I suddenly remembered this song, which I loved but had somehow never finished. I sent the track across to Ro and when she sent back her rough take I was like ‘YES. this is it.’”
With ‘forevher’ Shura’s immediately-identifiable way with love, touch, and how we talk about it reached even greater creative heights. Having moved from West London to New York following her adored 2016 debut, Nothing’s Real, it’s all mirrored in a lyrical journey from rejection and loss to desire, long-distance love, and the prospect of how we make something real actually work.
In 2020, Shura emerged as one of contemporary pop’s accidental trailblazers. A frank, funny voice in the LGBTQ+ community, whose contribution to the paradigm-shift in the cultural landscape cannot be underestimated.
Written primarily about Shura’s relationship with her girlfriend and their long-distance conception, forevher traces everything from the initial pull of desire to that first IRL meeting (‘the stage’), before recognising when the connection develops into something scarily meaningful. It’s a classic NYC-to-London love-story, but one told through the totally modern filter of dating apps, unanswered texts, Skype chats…and MUNA gigs.
