Gordi has returned with an emotive new single titled ‘Way I Go’, sharing it today (May 26) as the first preview of a six-track EP due out in July.

In a press release, Gordi – real name Sophie Payten – explained that ‘Way I Go’ was a love song, tying its homely and raw soundscape to the emotions she explores in its lyrics. It’s “about the newness and the oldness of being in love,” Payten said; “how it saturates and warms you, expands and transforms”.

The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Triana Hernandez, which Payten noted was “filmed in one afternoon and features me putting my short-lived career as a swim instructor to good use, before walking around the streets of Brunswick in Melbourne in a dusty pink blazer I bought for $5 from the local goodwill store”.

Take a look at the clip below:

Expounding on the concept behind the video, Hernandez said: “The video for ‘Way I Go’ is a seemingly minimal concept – a simple walk toward the house of someone you love, collecting flowers along the way – yet the level of emotional rollercoasters happening within transforms the walk into an ethereal and organic experience, well beyond the streets of Melbourne’s northern suburbs.”

Payten wrote, engineered and produced ‘Way I Go’ alongside Alex Lahey, with whom she linked up last February for the collaborative single ‘Dino’s’. They also worked together for Lahey’s soundtrack contribution to The Mitchells vs. The Machines, ‘On My Way’, and performed a joint session for KEXP’s At Home series.

The session that ‘Way I Go’ came from is one of many that Payten will celebrate on her upcoming EP ‘Inhuman’, with its tracklist pulled from disparate sessions done between the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, the Wisconsin town of Eaux Claires, LA and her native Melbourne.

The EP will be out on July 15 via Liberation, and is said to cover, thematically, “the trials of humanity, from love and identity to faith and religion, traversing the spectrum of sorrow to celebration”. It comes as the longform follow-up to Payten’s second album as Gordi, ‘Our Two Skins’, which landed in June 2020.

Payten has kept mighty busy over the past two years, though. Among her many recent feats are remix EPs for ‘Our Two Skins’ and its single ‘Extraordinary Life’ (both of which featured a striking redux from Georgia Maq), the ‘Refracted’ short film and live EP, a piano-led cover of Dolly Parton’s hit ‘The Grass Is Blue’, appearances on The Sound and triple j’s Like A Version, and an immersive 3D live album experience titled ‘Buried City’.

She’s also released collaborative efforts with Josh Pyke (‘The Hummingbird’) and Troye Sivan (‘Wait’), and co-wrote Fergus James’ single ‘Slow Separation’.

Next week, Payten will perform two shows at the Sydney Opera House as part of this year’s Vivid LIVE program. She’ll take to its Drama Theatre stage for headline gigs on Friday June 3 and Saturday 4 – find tickets here.

NME declared ‘Our Two Skins’ to be the second-best Australian album of 2020, with writer Nick Buckley calling it “a momentous achievement in atmosphere, grandeur and inventive recording techniques, using wasp nest-riddled stereos, clanging sheep ramps and jingling farm gates”.

Publisher