Bloomsday, Mali Velasquez
UW Memorial Union-Terrace 800 Langdon St., Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Desdemona Dallas
Iris James Garrison of Bloomsday.
Iris James Garrison of Bloomsday.
Delicate ethereal vocals from Iris James Garrison waft over spare acoustic guitar — that’s the heart of the dreamy indie folk that is Bloomsday. The band’s vibe immediately recalls the laziest days of summer and the warm, golden, nostalgic days of fall. It should be a perfect match for a sunset over Picnic Point. With Mali Velasquez. Note: The time for this show has moved up to 4 pm.
WUD Music. Free.
media release: Bloomsday – the tender, cerebral project of the New York-based Iris James Garrison – will tour this September in support of their new album. Heart of the Artichoke is Bloomsday’s second record, the follow-up to their 2022 debut Place to Land. Heart of the Artichoke is a relic of unfettered creativity and community. They recount the miracles of the mundane, the memories that become sacred, an ode to all that is holy: nightswimming, songs plucked from the ether, the ways friendship can endure.
Heart of the Artichoke was recorded across 10 days in June 2023 in upstate New York at duo Babehoven’s studio and co-produced by Babehoven’s Ryan Albert, with mixing by Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp. The record was built out with a wide-ranging group of collaborators, including inventive drumming from Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Babehoven’s Maya Bon, Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.), and Chris Daley (Tomberlin). It was an insulated and collaborative experience: all family dinners on the back porch, bonfires, feeling a full sense of joy, of friendship, of purity in the artistic self. Garrison’s role as maestro is crucial, singular – it’s a collaborative, exploratory spirit harnessed by Garrison’s intuition, and by an honest commitment to carve out creative space for play, to delve into what’s known – or pushing past that, into unknown.