Alison Mosshart announces solo spoken word album ‘Sound Wheel’

The Kills frontwoman Alison Mosshart has announced the release of her first solo spoken word album, ‘Sound Wheel’.

  • READ MORE: Alison Mosshart shares solo song ‘It Ain’t Water’ and tells us what’s next for The Kills

The new album is a companion piece to her book Car Ma, a collection of paintings, photographs, short stories and poetry.

Mosshart has shared the first taste of ‘Sound Wheel’ with ‘Returning The Screw’, alongside a self-directed music video. The song, albeit austere, is still mostly sung rather than a spoken affair – watch it below:

Advertisement

Per a press statement, both the book and companion album are “about cars, rock n’ roll, and love”.

“They’re about America, performance, and life on the road. They’re about fender bender portraiture, story tellin’ tire tracks, and the never-ending search for the spirit under the hood,” it continued.

“[Mosshart] shows us that the engine on fire is connected to the guitar feeding back since birth.”

Mosshart described the genesis of the spoken word album as a happy accident while writing Car Ma.

View this post on Instagram

Hello my friends, I am pleased to announce the printing press has been fired up and Third Man are releasing my book Car Ma worldwide. The book comes in Standard Edition Cigarette Red Soft Cover or Special Edition Hardback in Chrome with an accordion pull out tire track painting poster. Not only that but Car Ma is also on vinyl. ? Car Ma’s spoken word record entitled ‘Sound Wheel’ is comprised of 45 recordings. It’s a sonic trip down the psycho highway which includes stories, poems, telephone conversations, music and more. Ship/street date is August 7th. Preorder now at Third Man. Link in bio. Love, AM @thirdmanrecords @thirdmanbooks

A post shared by Alison Mosshart (@amosshart) on

Advertisement

“There were some passages I struggled to get right, and I got in the practice of reading them out loud and recording them, to hear and feel where words or sentences were rubbing together wrong,” she explained.

“I’d listen back to these recordings and they’d be real informative to me in that way. This tool I was using to help me, started feeling like this whole other angle or art form. And I started thinking it would be interesting to perform/record the whole book, not in a straight up spoken word way, but more like a sound sculpture of characters and voices and miscellaneous cut ups, no rules.”

‘Sound Wheel’ will be released on August 7 via Third Man Records, alongside a wider release of Car Ma.







The news follows the release of Mosshart’s first ever solo material in May of this year, with the singles ‘It Ain’t Water’ and ‘Rise’. Upon their release, the singer told NME she was in the middle of writing another The Kills record with Jamie Hince.

“We’ve just been writing and demoing and stuff, so we’ve got about three or four tracks that we’re really into – and then a tonne of other ones that are just in rotation that we’re working on. They sound different, but everyone will probably think they sound like us,” Mosshart said.

Advertisement