We are thrilled to present the premiere for the new track by The Colorist Orchestra and Howe Gelb, featuring Pieta Brown – Sweet Pretender – available everywhere tomorrow. Of the track, Howe Gelb shares, “Being a friend and a fan of Pieta for a quarter century has its perks .. visiting each other in song is like having a dance 1500 miles apart with the best backing band money can‘t even buy. It’s a dream and a splendor, some sweet pretending & a delirious upender.“ Pieta Brown adds to the description of the song’s journey, “This song came to me one day when I was playing electric guitar. The muse was very open to my abandonment issues and love addiction that day…the song came in very sudden-like and as soon as I sang it through a few times I imagined it as a duet. I figured out pretty quickly I would need Nick Cave or Howe Gelb to really deliver it “right”. I mentioned the song to Howe once or twice, but a duet titled “Sweet Pretender” didn’t get too much of an excited response…hahaha…but when I got the invitation to collaborate with Howe and The Colorist Orchestra I couldn’t resist sending them a very rough demo of Sweet Pretender. Then, it seemed like almost instantaneously I received the TCO’s sublime interpretation and arrangement! I was floored. In a flurry I sang some lines…and Howe responded across the miles. I had imagined it as a dark electric piece. How did the TCO make it dark and light at once? Now, when I hear it it sounds like how it must’ve meant to be.”
On ‘Sweet Pretender’ the artists create a lush sonic landscape. Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans of The Colorist Orchestra are best known as interpreters and reimagineers, bringing their melodic percussion and avant-classical approach to other people’s songs. Howe Gelb is forever swerving and advancing, with a 50-album discography that includes Giant Sand’s underground guitar-skronk classics, solo piano and pump-organ mood poems, standards, country-and-Southwestern, and even gospel and flamenco. Now, with their project Not On The Map (Dangerbird), which also features singer-songwriter Pieta Brown, the Belgian arrangers and the Arizona vagabond have made something entirely new, and this is testamentary clear on this new track, available everywhere tomorrow.
