Bloomsday

Today, Bloomsday – the project of New York-based Iris James Garrison – announces their new album Heart of the Artichoke, out June 7th via Bayonet, and shares its lead single/video, “Dollar Slice.” Recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at the studio of duo Babehoven, the record was co-produced by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr (Slow Pulp). The record was built out with a wide-ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley (Tomberlin). It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self.

“Dollar Slice” is the sweeping centerpoint of the record – Garrison’s cavernous crescendoing vocals, the chaotic tapestry of New York the backdrop, a sort-of 2024-update of “One of Us.” “I’m not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power – whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. That’s kind of godly to me.” The accompanying video, directed by Richard Orofino and Pearl Dickson, features Garrison journeying across the city making deliveries and encountering a colorful cast of characters.

The way Bloomsday’s Iris James Garrison writes songs feels like somewhere between a mirror and a memory. Spacious, full-bodied folk songs, they are an ode to things that are good no matter how small; they sometimes feel like the ghost of a Mary Oliver poem. Heart of the Artichoke is Bloomsday’s second record, the follow-up to their 2022 debut Place to Land. It’s a relic of unfettered creativity and community. Garrison recounts the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.

Collaboration is an integral part of Bloomsday’s musical process. Garrison is malleable in the studio, their songwriting generous and spacious. But in listening to the record, there’s a sense that Garrison leaves room for the players, for the listener; for songs to find the shapes they’re meant to take. Garrison’s role as maestro is crucial – it’s a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison’s intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what’s known – or pushing past that, into unknown.

Heart of the Artichoke was written from a healed, matured place – in a moment of safety from chaos. It’s a prayer for the present, an appreciation of tenderness and what happens once we give ourselves the space to really see, and really feel – becoming free and whole – an ode to the way healing allows us to bloom.