Hemi Hemingway – (To Be) Without You: 13th Floor New Song Of The Day
Enigmatic Te Whanganui-a-Tara singer Hemi Hemingway announces his brand new single (To Be) Without You out now via Stockholm-based label PNKSLM Recordings.
Here is the blurb with more:
With the rock’n’roll panache of a dive bar matador and the emotional force of a knife in the guts, Hemi Hemingway makes music that thrills, spills and breaks hearts. The effortlessly slick New Zealand star has a connoisseur’s ear for the finest parts of musical history, sweeping 60s rock, 50s sheen and 80s romanticism into the present day, refurbishing and refashioning them into something new and fresh. At home in the spotlight, he’s a showman in the best troubadour traditions, but one with real depth, showcasing swagger and vulnerability in equal measure.
When speaking about the song, Hemingway said “With ‘(To Be) Without You’ I was thinking a lot about a trip I took to Greece in late 2022. In hindsight, there were signs that my life was really about to change; I was moving back to New Zealand, and I didn’t know what my future looked like. When I was writing this song the energy of it reminded me of Greece – especially Athens; the heat on the stone at night, the dark and empty alleys, beautiful people moving everywhere and lots of exposed skin. There was a mysterious timelessness to the city; it felt like a place that knows everything about you the moment you step foot there. I was carrying a hidden sadness while I was there, and it knew. ‘(To Be) Without You’ captures my worried mind and a feeling of longing to have that place and that time back again, to do things differently, but to have to instead make peace with my choices.”
“The idea for the ‘(To Be) Without You’ video actually came about one morning while I was on a run; I looked up at this stadium light in the park where I was running and noticed that it wasn’t a perfect cylinder, but that it had many small sides. It towered above and it really reminded me of a Greek column. I realised I was seeing these flashes of my old life in amongst the landscape of my new life in New Zealand, and had been for a while. In my mind I’d been seeing this dark, shadowy figure stalking me. Adam (the director) and I call her The Apparition) – who was played so perfectly by Kelsey Magan – and I realised that she was this personification of my unprocessed feelings around my separation and leaving London. The video depicts me trying to cope with life while being stalked by The Apparition, and becoming more aware of her until she makes me face her; and only through that confrontation do I really come out better off.”
Having played around in other bands in the darker waters of the music scene for a number of years, Shaun Blackwell eventually took the plunge, and, with the help of a four- track recorder, launched a solo project. To do that, he stepped into the shoes of Hemi Hemingway, stage persona and Blackwell’s alter ego, the character that breathes life into the songs. Hemi introduced himself to the world with 2021’s ‘The Lonely Hunter’ EP, six songs of lush, 60s-inspired classical pop, followed by his debut album, 2023’s ‘Strangers Again’, both of which were picked up by KEXP and led to a couple of sold-out London shows at Moth Club and the Shacklewell Arms, and support slots for Kurt Vile, A. Savage (Parquet Courts), C. W. Stoneking and Night Beats.
