November Ultra
November Ultra announces additional London date to European tour.
This month, we were lucky enough to host November Ultra in London for her sold out show at St Pancras Old Church. Following an announcement on her socials last week, the singer-songwriter will be returning to the big smoke this November as she adds another date at London’s Hoxton Hall to her European tour.
Parisian vocalist November Ultra has truly been one to watch this year. After releasing her beautifully warm debut album, November hopes ‘Bedroom Walls’ will take its listeners on a journey. “I’ve put everything I was – every tear, every laughter, every memory – into this album,” she says. Now, it’s time for the rest of the world to take it and fill it with their own experiences, imagination and lives.
Before she embarked on her stunning solo project, November was a member of the Paris band Agua Roja for five years, and has worked as a topliner/songwriter for artists including Jaden Smith, Barbara Pravi, and Terrenoire. It was an experience that taught her everything, from performing to producing on Ableton – a key skill utilised on her own album. Above all, though, being a part of the group taught her how to be “an artist and a musician and how to do that every day”. Prior to joining the band, November would be struck by inspiration, write a song and then not be able to create anything else for months, leaving her feeling like a failure. Slowly, working with her bandmates, she realised that waiting for a bolt from the blue isn’t what works for her – instead she needs to embrace what she calls an “ultra life”; one where she lets herself experience and feel everything.
That overflowing energy fills every corner of ‘Bedroom Walls’, a singular pop album that is beautifully coloured with a life lived to the fullest, from the lullaby-like ‘Soft And Tender’ to the shadowy, pulsating ‘Monomania’. The title refers to her own Parisian room, where messages from friends are scrawled on walls and books, objects and gifts lie everywhere. It’s where November is able to be her most unfiltered, honest self. “You can take off the mask of being what society expects us to be and it’s one of those places where you can’t lie because it’s just you and yourself,” she explains. “I was doing something that was really uncomfortable and I needed to be in the most comfortable place to acknowledge how obsessive I am, how nostalgic I am, how sad I am, and that was my bed.”
The record features November singing in three different languages, each of which symbolises something different to the artist. When she began writing songs in her later adolescence, November did so in English to keep the things she was singing about under wraps from her mother, the language allowing her to write diary entries out loud. In adulthood, it still has special significance for her: “It feels so comfortable to me and that’s where I feel the safest and the most myself and the most constant.” Singing in Spanish feels “almost visceral”, which she rationalises links back to her roots and relationship with her grandfather, while French – which appears sparingly on the record – makes her feel “so vulnerable” but allows her to illuminate certain things that she has to say.
Tickets for her new London date are on sale here.