London art-rock collective Modern Woman have announced their long-awaited debut album, Johnny’s Dreamworld, set for release on May 1st via One Little Independent Records. The announcement is paired with the lead single “Dashboard Mary,” a cinematic narrative that builds from a tense “morning-after” comedown into a soaring, rapturous climax. Accompanied by a 16mm surrealist film shot across Iceland and London, the track highlights the band’s evolution from Sophie Harris’s solo songwriting origins into a formidable four-piece capable of blending post-punk, avant-garde, and folk into a singular, volatile force.
Sophie Harris says:
“This is a song that I wanted to write like a film. I wanted to confront the feeling of the ‘morning after’ and the decisions made during that time of exhilaration the night before.”
On the experience of directing the “Dashboard Mary” video, she continues:
“This was the first time I had directed a video, we shot it on 16mm film, which was an experience. We went to Iceland to shoot the snow scenes, to the south coast of the UK for the beach, some scenes in London, and finally a scene in an apartment in the Barbican. It is essentially a dream sequence, waking up in different locations and falling back asleep to wake up elsewhere. I liked the idea of something following the main character around in her subconscious.”
Produced by Joel Burton, the record explores the “strange poetry” of the ordinary, with Harris’s literary-inflected lyrics diving into the complexities of female fixation and the raw, often hidden sides of femininity. Sonically, the album thrives on a “tender/harsh” interplay, where intricate layers of violin and saxophone are grounded by a propulsive rhythm section. To support the release, Modern Woman are currently on the road across Europe and the UK supporting Ezra Furman, bringing their notoriously incendiary live show to audiences ahead of the album’s spring arrival.
Regarding the core philosophy of the album, Harris explains:
“A vital theme I’ve always wanted in Modern Woman is the idea of conflicting things, of the tender/harsh, loud/quiet and scrappy/polished. The style of everybody’s playing, drawing from a melting pot of influences, coming together to form something new.”
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