Nicole Atkins has shared “Mind Eraser,” a new track from her upcoming album Italian Ice (May 29 / Single Lock Records). A groovy meditation on lucid dreaming co-written with My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel, the string-laden song draws from a wide range of influences including Serge Gainsbourg, Radiohead and Roy Orbison. It’s a wholly distinct addition to an album that Nicole has described as "an acid trip through my record collection.”
"Mind Eraser" follows the release of Italian Ice's radio single "Domino," which has been hailed by Pitchfork as “an apocalyptic groove" with "retro glamour" and "shades of French touch and Jessie Ware.” Rolling Stone deemed it "an excellent disco song for our troubled times." Co-produced by Nicole and Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes), “Mind Eraser” was recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio with a dynamite band consisting of Jim Sclavunos and David “Moose” Sherman from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Dap-Kings’ Binky Griptite, drummer McKenzie Smith (St. Vincent, Midlake), and Spooner Oldham and David Hood of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
Nicole also continues her "Alone We're All Together" weekly livestream series, which has featured a wide range of special guests through its first few weeks, including Dean Ween, Lilly Hiatt and Hamilton Leithauser (who is also one of Nicole's Italian Ice co-writers).
In each song she creates, Nicole Atkins reveals her incredible power to transport listeners to a much more charmed time and space. On her new album Italian Ice, the New Jersey-bred singer/songwriter conjures the romance and danger and wild magic of a place especially close to her heart: the Jersey Shore in all its scrappy beauty. Inspired by the boardwalk’s many curiosities—the crumbling Victorian mansions, the lurid and legendary funhouse, the Asbury Park rock-and-roll scene she played a key part in reviving—Atkins ultimately transforms her never ending fascination into a wonderland of her own making.
“When you’re on the boardwalk there’s a feeling that anything can happen, and that’s the feeling I tried to create with this record,” Atkins says. “I wanted to give people something they can put on and buy into a fantasy that gets them excited about what might happen in their own lives.”
