Het vierde album van Billie Marten is in zicht. Op 7 april mogen wij onze oren blootstellen aan Drop Cherries. Met dit album wordt er ècht kennis gemaakt met Billie. Ze deelt namelijk dat ze bij het maakproces voornamelijk heeft gefocust op wat zij de luisteraar wil laten horen, in plaats van op wat zij denkt dat het publiek horen wil. Drop Cherries is dus een verzameling liedjes die echte intuïtieve gevoelens uitdrukken.

Van het vieren van momenten van het alledaagse, naar diepe existentiële vragen  tot het uiteindelijke besluit dat liefde ook de pure eenvoud kan zijn van het delen van een willekeurig moment met iemand van wie je houdt. Drop Cherries weerspiegelt verschillende fases binnen een relate, terwijl ze mooi in elkaar proberen over te lopen.

With a fourth record looming over her, Billie Marten at last learned to stop thinking about what others want to hear and finally started to trust her own instincts. “When I’m trying to write, the creative door is closed most of the time,” she says. “When it briefly opens, I know I’ve stumbled across moments of true emotion and insight; they give no warning and are often unpredictable. I can’t force the process, something I’m realising more with each album. And that’s why I know that Drop Cherries is a collection of songs expressing genuine intuitive feeling.”

The title is taken from a tale she heard from a friend just before she was starting to create songs for the album, and the title track came soon after. It’s a metaphor where the gift of cherries stands for offering someone your love; doing anything you can to make them happy. “Dropping cherries,” she begins, “is such a strong, visceral image that I tried to channel throughout recording in Somerset and Wales, to capture the vibrancy, unpredictability, and occasional chaos one experiences within a relationship.”

“Imagine stamping blood-red cherries onto a clean, cream carpet and tell me that’s not how love feels.”

Drop Cherries is a series of vignettes highlighting different pieces of a relationship, while trying to fit them together. From celebrating moments of the mundane (‘Just Us’), through deep existential questioning (‘Devil Swim’, ‘Acid Tooth’, ‘Arrows’), to the final resolve which is the pure simplicity of sharing a moment with someone you love (‘Drop Cherries’, ‘I Bend To Him’). It’s often the case that each record has to be a new ‘statement’ for the artist, a re-branding, a progression.

But Billie Marten’s statement is always the same: “I’m simply searching for clarity. I’m re-examining the same feelings I had when I first started writing: I feel different to others, so I’ll write about what that’s like and see if I can work out why that is.”

“If I ever do, maybe I’ll stop writing.”