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'Grace Jones' towers over Goodnight Louisa's seductive return

Seduction, gender and solitary power play out in Goodnight Louisa’s return, emboldened in the company of the uncompromising, iconoclastic icon within…

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Roleplay, loneliness and caricatures of awesome, androgynous power pulse through the new single from Goodnight Louisa, returning with new music for the first time since her critically-praised album of two years ago. The Glasgow-based multi-disciplinary artist brings the light/shade, intricate bedsit disco pop of Grace Jones into the world to make a bold, synth-driven start on her second album run-in. 
Emerging from the wreckage of past musical projects to piece together her first solo work at the tail end of the last decade, the 2022 release of the debut Goodnight Louisa album, Human Danger, concreted in a concept of the artist as a teller of, sometimes brutal, truths framed by bright, DIY electronically-rooted songwriting.
Weighing up thoughts of her own persona during fresh nights of solitude, Goodnight Louisa – also known as musician and actor, Louise McCraw – was struck by the urgent vision of Grace Jones. The idea of the awesome, one-of-a-kind model, pop star, musician, writer and actor, who tore through the 80’s as a steely icon of non-compromise, took the place of confusion, loneliness and uncertainty.

McCraw explains the single further: “I’d not long started living alone. Something I’d found very difficult to adjust to, a jarring combination of not knowing who I was anymore and having a lot of alone time. In my solitude, with a glass of wine, I sat at my desk, situated facing my tenement window that looked out onto Pilrig Street in Leith, and I wanted to create this bold persona. And right there and then, in one go, I wrote ‘Grace Jones’.
“The whole song was shaped around a pitch shifter that I used to create this commanding, other-worldy voice. It was so freeing to feel like I could become a different person. How could I invite someone over, anyone over, and kind of seduce them. Getting to know all about them, basking in this possibility I’d never had before. Make them mine. The more I sunk into this character, I realised the easier it was to get wrapped up in your own ego.”
Having released Human Danger, an album of draining honesty, Goodnight Louisa’s journey to her second album began with the writing of Grace Jones and has resulted in a further 11 tracks. Whilst apparently prolific by that song count, the artist states that ‘this record took everything I had’, once again suggesting what comes next is an all-or-nothing account of ‘the now’ in which McCraw finds herself.
Goodnight Louisa’s return has been accompanied by a return to the stage, appearing at this month’s Beyond The Music festival and conference in Manchester earlier this month and looking ahead to a home city headline show on Thu 24 October at Glasgow’s Nice N Sleazy for ListLive.
For the most up-to-date information on Goodnight Louisa, including future live dates and new music releases, connect online at:
 
www.instagram.com/goodnightlouisa
https://x.com/goodnightlouisa
https://www.facebook.com/goodnightlouisa