Black Honey have announced their second album, Written & Directed. It arrives on January 29 2021, via Foxfive records. This announcement follows their latest single, ‘Run For Cover’, released last week. In an Instagram post, the band declared, “these are 10 of the best songs we have ever written and this record is Black Honey on STEROIDS.”
Written & Directed is a great name and the album has a great ambition. Frontwoman Izzy B. Phillips declared, “I made this record for young women to feel invincible.” The press release calls Written & Directed “a 10 track mission statement.” It reads, “Exploring everything from womanhood, to identity and power, it’s an album that revels in the rich history of pop culture, throws a wink to its rock-and-roll heroes, but ultimately (and in true Black Honey fashion) it stands on its own two feet.”
Phillips declared a similar, feminist intention when asked about their first single. Speaking to the Line of Best Fit, she said, “It’s fun but on a bit of a knife edge of risk and weird. Sex can be clumsy, emotional and complex. There’s so much baggage that it comes with. We wrote the song from a man’s perspective. It felt empowering to flip it to the female gaze. I think I’m exploring both power and my weakness in equal measure. We wanted it to sound manic – like Hives meets John Travolta, hips swinging.”
Following this, Phillips says earnestly, “I love this song. I hope it makes women find themselves and dump their boyfriends.”
Everything Black Honey have shared to do with Written & Directed so far has this distinctly 1940s kind of feel. The set for Run For Cover contains old televisions and rotary dial telephones – and have you ever seen a woman in pin up curls play electric guitar? Find out more below.
First single, ‘Beaches’ (released in July), runs with a similar aesthetic, focusing on garish colours and consumerism as its cornerstones, but with the same vintage feel, the same old televisions. Released under the pressures of quarantine, ‘Beaches’ is in no way compromised; what the video can’t achieve due to lockdown restrictions, it pretends to achieve with backdrops and clever editing. No one will ever say that 2020 held back Black Honey.
‘Beaches’ demands attention; this will hopefully be the attitude of all of Written & Directed. It’s not clear yet whether the album will all have the same unifying aesthetic, but its intentions are promising. Certainly, this is an explosive start.
Written & Directed tracklist:
1. I Like The Way You Die
2. Run For Cover
3. Beaches
4. Back Of The Bar
5. Believer
6. I Do It To Myself
7. Disinfect
8. Summer ‘92
9. Fire
10. Gabrielle
