Track by track: Nicole Atkins takes us through her new album, ‘Italian Ice’

As we approach the release of Italian Ice, the new album from Nicole Atkins, the US singer-songwriter has given us a track-by-track rundown of the new record.

If you’ve had your finger on the pulse of music for some time, you’d undoubtedly be aware of the majesty of Nicole Atkins. Having been on the scene for close to 20 years, Atkins released her first full-length record in 2007, following years of EPs.

As time has gone on, she’s gone from strength to strength, working with some big names in the industry while sharing her masterful compositions that truly intoxicate anyone who is lucky enough to hear them.

This Friday sees the release of Italian Ice, the newest record from Atkins, and her first since 2017. Originally set to be released in April, its release date was pushed back due to COVID-19, though it is undoubtedly worth the wait.

To celebrate the arrival of the astounding new album, Atkins has been kind enough to give us a detailed track-by-track run-through of each of the record’s gorgeous songs.

Check out ‘Mind Eraser’ by Nicole Atkins:

Nicole Atkins talks us through Italian Ice

‘AM Gold’

This was a song I wrote in Asbury Park right before we moved to Nashville. That was over five years ago. I had the music written but not the words. Just the melody. I envisioned this song always being the opening of the record. Even though I didn’t know what it was about yet, I knew it could only be the type of song that lets you into an album.

The day before the last session of vocal overdubs, I fell asleep at the Gunrunner watching the news. Of course this was last year so everything on the news was awful and I woke up to pundits arguing in the middle of the night and just had the words for the chorus like from a lucid dream.

The line “Were stranded in the garbage of eden. We’re starving what we should’ve been feeding.” And that was it. I knew I could finish the song from there.

However this was supposed to be a record to make me feel better so I needed a cure for all of that. What cures me most is the boardwalk and listening to the AM station in my mom’s car. Simple as that.

‘Mind Eraser’

Carl Broemel from My Morning Jacket was one of the only people I knew when I first moved to Nashville.

We got together to write a song and I had this piece that I thought was kind of a Roy Orbison type melodramatic chorus and then Carl started playing Radiohead chords underneath it and I just started free styling and it became this whole song that was just so far out and reminded me of so many different things like the Beatles and Blur and the Beta Band all rolled into one.

I was having some crazy dreams (as usual) and we wrote the lyrics based off of that. Dreams that are just so intense that even if they’re bad, they’re exciting and there’s nothing like it, until you go to sleep again. Those lines between reality and dreaming are really blurred for me sometimes.

‘Domino’

One summer while touring, my band and I got really into listening to French electro music. It’s the perfect kind of music to drive to for long hours at night. Back at home in Nashville, I turned my friend Dex Green onto some of it while we were recording for my other project with Jim Sclavunos of the Bad Seeds.

Dex caught the bug and got into it too and we talked about how we could write something together that felt like French electro but would still fit into my style. A few days later he sent over a drum and keys track and we finished the song from there fairly quickly.

‘Forever’

I sang a couple songs at Spooner Oldham’s 75th birthday party at the Shoals Theater. That was my first time meeting Spooner and David Hood and a bunch of other great musicians from the Shoals. During one of the set breaks I was having a cigarette in the alley with guitarist, Kelvin Holly, who played for Little Richard and Neil Young.

He asked me how I’d met my husband. My husband is a sound engineer from Scotland. I told him he was my tour manager and then my friend, but I always knew something was different about him because he smelled like forever. Kelvin goes “well that’s a song right there.” And so I made it into a song.

Check out ‘Captain’ by Nicole Atkins:

‘Captain (feat. Britt Daniel)’

I wrote this song right before the session. I kept thinking of certain people in my life who are of the caretaker personality type. Those who are always taking care of everyone else so much that they forget to take care of themselves. This song was my way of saying, “Rest for a while. I got you.”

‘Never Going Home Again’

I wanted to write a song that reminded me of The Mamas & The Papas so I could have one song on the record that I sang harmonies with other singers I liked. I wanted it to be a fun road song.

I started writing the words from my own experiences on tour and then Jim Sclavunos told me a story about being banned from Japan for life and a very detailed account of seeing a UFO in Denton, Texas after a Panther Burns show he did.

We combined our stories and put them all in the song. Then I got Seth Avett, Erin Rae and John Paul White to sing with me on it. It’s a fun ride.

‘St. Dymphna’

I had this song on a voice note in my phone that I made when I was opening for Mercury Rev a while back at St. George’s cathedral in Newcastle.

At first I think it sounded like a Smith’s song but after a while I realised it wanted to have more of a Lois Prima vibe. A frantic Italian hangover plea to the heaven’s that you don’t die or go insane.

I looked up St. George and found him to be a pretty pedestrian Saint, so I was thinking about which ones I could look up that would fit the song. I remembered me and my old band the Black Sea’s favorite bar on St. Mark’s from back in the day – A place where we were all at pretty special points of our lives of varying degrees of shitshow.

It was called St. Dymphna’s. I looked her up. St. Dymphna, the patron Saint of Mental Illness and lost children. Bingo.

‘Far From Home’

I wanted to write a story song for once. My dad used to tell us these really funny and very un-PC stories when we were young about a kid that disobeys his father’s “don’t talk to strangers” rule at the beach and ends up in a basement in a hole with a ten foot spider (the band name’s taken sorry) and in the end he gets rescued by his father although he also gets “beaten like a rented mule” for his disobedience.

We loved these stories. So this song is my own version of that. It’s about a narcissist, like maybe one of today’s social media “influencers” or something.

She get’s lured to the boardwalk and taken to the funhouse. Locked in the hall of mirrors forever so she can always have infinite eyes gazing back at her (the most adoring ones, her own) forever.

Check out ‘Domino’ by Nicole Atkins:

‘A Road To Nowhere’

I fell in love with this song when I heard the singer Judy Henske completely lose her mind when she covered this for producer Jack Nitzsche.

I sang it at the Music Hall of Williamsburg thinking it was her song and afterwards, someone came up and said “Great Carole King cover!” I had no idea she had wrote it and then I could only find her version on YouTube and it was amazing.

This is a song I’ve been playing now for a few years and when I sing it I feel like I’m living through it.

‘These Old Roses’

I saw Britt Daniel at a benefit show we were both singing at in Brooklyn. I’ve always been a big fan of his music and writing so I asked him to write a song with me. We got together and talked about the Walker Brothers and old Italian ’60s music.

I had this melody in my phone and we came up with this in an afternoon. The line “These old roses have seen better days” I had written down in a notebook from a tour where they left some dead roses in my dressing room. I thought that line had something dramatic to it and the song sounded so dramatic so it was a perfect fit for this.

‘In The Splinters’

This was a melody I had for a while. I wanted the closer on this album to have a sing-along with your beer end of the night “I don’t wanna go home,” feel to it. I also felt that the melody had a lot of piss and vinegar and hopefulness in it.

I always thought it had more of a Broadway feel to it so I didn’t consider it a song for my album. Then I heard Hamilton Leithauser sing and thought he sounded like if Frank Sinatra was a pirate and the idea came to me that he’d be the perfect person to help me finish this song. I could hear it in his voice and then it informed me on how I should approach singing it.

It’s a song about Hurricane Sandy and what I learned from going through that living at the Jersey Shore. I didn’t know it until a few years later but having events change the way the landscape looks, have it change you, and you feel like it’s the end, and then time passes and you’re still standing, although changed, you’re still standing and shit’s gonna be ok.

Nicole Atkins’ Italian Ice is officially out on Friday, May 29th via Single Lock Records/Cooking Vinyl Australia.

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