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JULIA WOLF and BLACKBEAR release Gothic Babe Tendencies
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WORDS by Tessa Swantek TALENTJulia Wolf and Blackbear PRMixed Media Works
Julia Wolf’s music is modern romanticism in its lyrics that emphasize emotional outpouring and individualized experience imagined in sweeping gothic settings with pointed arches, stained glass windows, and ribbed vaults. Like creating a stained glass window, she pours her emotions into a furnace of music, lyrics, production, and artwork to then mold into richly toned shapes, forming a storied image. In each one, she chooses how much light to let in, as most are transparent while others are more opaque.
Through music, Julia Wolf crafts a world that is uniquely her own. Like a wolf’s amber eyes, imagery that is present in much of her work, her songs are retroreflective. With each song release, the light she releases reflects directly back to her and illuminates her.
Her most recent release, “Gothic Babe Tendencies,” is in collaboration with blackbear (Matthew Tyler Musto) and like a romantic-era painting, presents a shadowy woodland landscape where the forest’s most powerful spirits, the wolf and the blackbear, cross paths. Both being highly instinctual, are drawn to the protective cover provided by the tree’s silvery shadows. Lyrics express this purgatory between light and dark; “Oh-oh, I got gothic babe tendencies, I always choose the dark/ But what if I surrendered to the sun? /The woods back in my hometown/ And Friday night Blockbuster countdowns/ How I'd choose the long way home to pass the beach / Wish you'd ask that kind of question/ The kind that digs for somethin' hidden.” When asked about the track, Wolf says, “‘Gothic Babe Tendencies’ speaks to how I feel when starting to develop feelings for someone. Finding someone you like is challenging—a rarity nowadays—so when it happens, something in me says it won’t last. It’s a gloomy mindset thinking it’s too good to be true so better to run before getting hurt. There’s a part of me that, of course, wants to believe….that wants to surrender to the sun instead of running from it. I think many of us ‘gothic babes’ have this internal battle.” In the track, Both Wolf and blackbear express survival instincts and defense mechanisms in their lyrics as blackbear sings, “Maybe I feel like I don't deserve your love/ But you could save me from this self-sabotage.”
“Finding someone you like is challenging—a rarity nowadays—so when it happens, something in me says it won’t last."
Rather than a woodland fantasy, the two actually connected over Instagram after blackbear commented on one of Wolf’s posts of her singing the track. “Gothic Babe Tendencies” will be one of the tracks on her upcoming debut album, Good Thing We Stayed, dropping January 13th. Wolf recently shared a photo on Instagram of the album’s cover artwork- Wolf illuminated in amber light with glowing eyes surrounded by a gallery wall of past recollections in gold romantic-era frames. She writes, “Like the artwork, this album is a collection of memories that have left heavy marks on my life. It story-tells the journey of how we got here today and the reasons that make me who I am. Having almost gave up a few years ago, ready to move [to] a different country and live someone else’s life, all I can say is, it’s a good thing we stayed.” After the album’s release, Wolf will go on tour beginning in Atlanta on February 10th.
Listen to "Gothic Babe Tendencies" here
Good Thing We Stayed is available
to preorder here
You can purchase tickets for the Gothic Babe Tendencies Tour here
Follow Julia Wolf:
Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify
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