Interview The Big Reveal: Shamir

Adorning the front of ‘Revelations’ – 22-year-old Shamir Bailey’s third studio album, released this month via US label Father / Daughter (home to Diet Cig, Vagabon and more) – is a picture of the singer with his eyes and mouth erased. It’s an unsettling portrait, and one that resonates strongly with the story behind the record itself. “It represents a lot of times throughout my career and life when I’ve wanted to speak up or I’ve turned a blind eye,” says Shamir, speaking down the phone during an away day in New York. “The image represents old me, whereas now I use my mouth and I’ve opened my eyes to a lot of things.”

Old Shamir, you may recall, came bursting out of the traps back in 2014 with the infectious electropop strut of early single ‘On The Regular’. He soon followed it with debut LP ‘Ratchet’ – a similarly-minded, technicolour explosion of sass and synths, released via XL Recordings in 2015. But when the singer got creatively itchy feet, things started to go awry. “I really feel like that whole time when I wrote ‘Ratchet’ was very genuine and true to me, but at the same time it wasn’t natural. I don’t like to dance and I was making dance music so I had to dance on stage…” he begins. “I’m happy I was able to bring out this other side to me and do it successfully and that people were able to relate to it, but at the same time I was suppressing so much of myself and that’s what was so frustrating.”

Having grown up on a diet of “‘90s alternative rock, like Hole, Black Tambourine and Velocity Girl,” plus his own holy triumvirate of Tegan & Sara, Vivian Girls and Beat Happening (“I have tattoos of those three artists all on one arm, and all three of those sounds could kind of sum up ‘Revelations’,” he notes), Shamir began to feel trapped by the slightly skewed public image of himself as a pop star. “I don’t think a lot of the interviews even focused on the music,” he elaborates. “The whole gender queer aspect of a pop star is not as foreign as when I first came out, whereas around ‘Ratchet’ a lot of the press was just about my identity which was kind of annoying, especially being so young and wide-eyed and trusting.” So, as he’d stated he would from the beginning, he started making music of a different ilk – a more guitar-based sound that wildly veered from that which had made his name. Predictably, his label weren’t buying it and, following a difficult period of attempted compromise, they eventually parted ways.