Silver Gore – Dogs In Heaven
Silver Gore—the London-based duo of newcomer Ava Gore and producer Ethan P. Flynn—announce their debut EP, Dogs In Heaven, out September 12th via Island Records, and release the new single/video, “All The Good Men,” with b-side single, “Forever.”
Dogs In Heaven is dazzlingly beautiful, wringing moments of triumph and euphoria from dark thoughts and sepia-filtered genre experiments. The result is an idiosyncratic and deeply felt record marking an indelible arrival for the duo.
Since dropping out of Guildhall School of Music in his late teens, Ethan has lent his talents to some of today’s most innovative artists, including FKA Twigs, Nia Archives and David Byrne. After initially meeting in 2018, Ava—herself a skilled drummer and classical vocalist—joined Ethan’s live band in 2021. One night after rehearsal, they decided to start writing songs together, and that evening, wrote today’s single, “All The Good Men,” sowing the seeds for what would become the duo’s debut of synth-pop earworms.
Following the release of the single, “Dogs In Heaven,” “All The Good Men” confidently pairs pop hooks with sharp synthesizer stabs, to be filed alongside Yeah Yeah Yeahs, MGMT and the saccharine hooks of bubblegum pop’s finest. Ava sings: “I just keep trying cos I’m confident // All the Good Men died on the continent // I just keep lying, I’m so fraudulent // I just keep smiling cause I’m tolerant.” “It’s a feel-good pop song. It’s sassy, it’s empowering,” Silver Gore say of the track. “This song is about men behaving badly and managing to keep going despite them.”
Silver Gore’s approach to style is, perhaps, best embodied by “Forever”, which drifts between earnest acoustic folk, swells of punishing post-rock, and bulbous, chugging indie-pop. The track has an innate warmth that sits at odds with its lyrical core: “‘Forever’ is kind of about feeling silenced, and about bad things happening quietly, and not being allowed to speak out about them,” says Ava.
Silver Gore bottle feelings in its most potent form, and as such, take an instinctive approach to production and lyricism that translates to a raw immediacy. “We always set out to make a song that speaks to how we’re feeling in a moment. Every decision is then based around that emotion whether it’s the lyrics or the drum sound or anything else,” Ava says of their sessions. “We try to document it exactly how it is in the moment and finish it then and there so we don’t have to pretend to dip back into specific feelings.”
Dogs In Heaven’s unique palette—baggy breakbeats and shoegaze guitars, undulating synths and walls of sound that appear as if from nowhere—is hyperactive and cathartic. With tactile, high-saturation gloss, the EP feels its way through some shadowy corners of society and the human psyche, touching on the nihilistic feeling of the 2020s and wryly nodding at ideas of conquest and British identity. Ava points to one particular phrase, ”Smile though your heart is breaking,” as being particularly representative of the EP’s spirit as a whole. “That’s the vibe— smiling through the tears, putting on a show,” she says, “putting on a brave face, even though you’re crumbling.” Dogs In Heaven wrings hopefulness from the wreckage, suggesting that a better world is and should be possible—if chaos is going to reign, we should at least get some beauty out of it.
Silver Gore Tour Dates
Fri. Aug. 15 – Wales, UK @ Green Man Festival
Fri. Aug. 29 – Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Wed. Sept. 17 – Hamburg, DE @ Reeperbahn Festival
Thu. Oct. 23 – Rotterdam, NL @ Left of the Dial Festival
Sat. Nov. 8 – Paris, FR @ Pitchfork Festival
Thu. Nov. 20 – Brussels, BE @ Rotonde – Botanique ^
Fri. Nov. 21 – Cologne, DE @ 674.FM ^
Mon. Nov. 24 – Hamburg, DE @ Aalhaus ^
Tue. Nov. 25 – Copenhagen, DM @ Ideal Bar (Vega) ^
Wed. Nov. 26 – Berlin, DE @ LARK ^
Fri. Nov. 28 – München, DE @ Import Export ^
Sat. Nov. 29 – Milan, IT @ Arci Bellezza ^
Sun. Nov. 30 – Düdingen, CH @ Bad Bonn Kilbi ^
Tue. Dec. 2 – Paris, FR @ La Boule Noire ^
Wed. Dec. 3 – Lyon, FR @ Le Sonic ^
^ = w/ Water From Your Eyes
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