In development for four years and teased by a series of performance artworks in collaboration with artist Athena Thebus, the album mines the grand drama of good and evil from Catholicism to make a case for Lucifer, the brightest and most beautiful angel, as a light for those forsaken by God.
In the rich tradition of queer performance, Lucifer appropriates and displaces the theatrical moralism learned from a Catholic upbringing in service of imagining a world beyond its present bounds.
Extending on the orchestral scope of debut album Inland Sea (co-produced by HTRK’s Nigel Lee-Yang),
the self-produced Lucifer places the fallen angel in a strange and uncanny intersection of soundworlds, as linked to the sci-fi elasticity of contemporary club music as to 90s industrial metal or the ecclesiastical tones of an organ-accompanied church choir. At the centre of each song lies Whale’s voice, whose melodies serve as a guide through this spooky milieu.
Lucifer follows Collarbones’ 2019 album Futurity and 2016 solo album Inland Sea, both longlisted for
the Australian Music Prize and nominated for SMAC Awards. Like Inland Sea, Lucifer is paired with a written work as its physical product, a zine containing lyrics, further texts, visual works and a dialogue with collaborator Athena Thebus.
Release: July 24th, 2020, Independent
Words: Marcus Whale