No Bra announces new album Candy

“On a date with the devil, the devil asked me ‘sing me one of your songs’, I said ‘well they’re not really songs, more like shouting’, the devil said ‘never mind, I’ll fuck you anyway’”

Welcome to the world of No Bra, where such blackly comic lyrics are paired with sinister electronic minimalism of equal discordance. Candy is the first full-length release from the now NYC-based Susanne Oberbeck since 2006’s Dance and Walk. The record is both a continuation of and growth from earlier tracks like Munchausen - which Pitchfork called “the London art-school answer to Losing My Edge's Williamsburg smack down” and Radio 1’s Pete Tong named his ‘Eclectic Song Of The Year’.

Candy is the result of a six year period during which Oberbeck toured, recorded and relocated to New York, where she added live musicians to her previously solo show, as well as starting up a weekly club night called Gay Vinylthat has attracted performances and DJ sets from artists such as The Horrors, Peaches and Julian Casablancas, before her recent North American tour with Savages.

The album sways from the outrageously funny ‘diva-clash’ of Date With The Devil to the cold, nightmarish soundscapes of Jhonnhh - Oberbeck’s tribute to Coil frontman John Balance - to the loose, hectic punk cover of early Suicide track Super Subway Comedian. It’s more organic and lighter on the beats than Dance and Walk but has lost none of the raw brilliance of its predecessor. The evolution is no more clear than in tracks like Minger, wonderfully rebooted for the album since its initial release as a video in 2011, which is clearly worth a watch, featuring appearances from Mykki Blanco and Dev Hynes.

A combination of no-budget bedroom recordings and studio time funded by legendary gallery Artists Space (famed for its late-70s punk and no wave shows leading to the Brian Eno-produced 'No New York' record), Candy is a collection of songs that are sometimes futuristic, sometimes dark, sado-masochistic yet humorous sexual fantasies. Oberbeck explains: “Construction Worker was originally a gay male fantasy about having sex with random construction workers in random suburbs of London, but the protagonist switches from male to female so it gets complicated. Upon moving to New York a kind of feminist angle was added, of turning the tables on lewd construction workers."

Title track Candy, accompanied by a scandalous new video, is about treating love and sex like Candy, Grindr style.

With fans including Michael Stipe, The XX and Mykki Blanco, No Bra’s second full length is as eclectic and, like her confrontational live shows, almost certainly as provocativeas the first – but that’s what makes Oberbeck’s entire act so spectacularly fascinating and iconic