It was announced last week that the Atlanta-based sister quarter von Grey will be releasing a new EP in August titled Panophobia, with the single from the EP “Katie” released this week. The sisters successfully blend their indie-alt-folk roots with an electronic, radio-ready pop sound, and with a sound like this, we can’t wait for their new EP!
Panophobia, the new EP from von Grey, will be released on Friday, August 14. Produced by Dan Hannon (Manchester Orchestra, A Rocket to the Moon), Panophobia is von Grey’s most raw and urgent offering to date. See below for track listing. The six-track EP follows 2014’s Awakening, praised by PopMatters as “strange, ethereal pop music, unencumbered by genre,” and 2012’s von Grey, which landed the alt-indie band bookings on “Late Show with David Letterman” and “Conan” and prompted Daytrotter to say, “They take our breath away.”
Bringing a fierce yet tender edge to their luminous harmonies, von Grey spins a story of unreciprocated longing on the EP’s first single, “Katie” released on May 12.
von Grey – made up of sisters Annika (vocals, violin, guitar, keys), Fiona (vocals, guitar, violin, percussion), Petra (keys, electronic percussion, background vocals) and Kathryn (cello, bass pedals, keys, background vocals) – will be touring widely in support of Panophobia. Summer tour dates will be announced soon. The Atlanta-based band has toured nationally with the Indigo Girls, Lindsey Stirling, Ron Pope and Rusted Root, among others, and performed at such festivals as Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, SXSW, Gathering of the Vibes and Shaky Knees.
While the EP’s title means “fear of everything” and reflects “the theme of insecurity or uncertainty threaded throughout the songs,” as Annika explains, Panophobia in fact represents von Grey’s bold and undaunted progression into new sonic terrain. “In making the EP, we really broke our patterns and worked with different sounds and textures that viscerally connected with us,” Annika says.
To create Panophobia, von Grey’s main songwriters, Annika and Fiona, employed a stream-of-consciousness approach to songwriting that compelled them toward everything from exploration of the insidious nature of mental illness (on “Cyclical Dreams”) to esoteric meditations on the forces of light and dark (on “Phengophobia,” whose title means “fear of daylight”). Both lyrically ambitious and sonically eclectic, Panophobia shifts from the stark “Forever Bound” (a haunting track laced with delicate piano work that captures the pain of losing a loved one to suicide) to the gloriously swirling and beat-driven “Reborn” to the sensually charged “Say My Name.”
Panophobia – Track Listing
1. Phengophobia
2. Cyclical Dreams
3. Katie
4. Forever Bound
5. Say My Name
6. Reborn
Cover photo by Mary Caroline Mann