Australian-born, New York-based singer-songwriter-pianist Tracey Yarad bares her soul through the dissolution of her marriage on All These Pretty Things. The stunning new album, due out July, 2024, traces Yarad’s tale through song, along with a lavishly illustrated, hardcover storybook.
Few real-life marriages end up unfolding like a storybook romance. For a long time Tracey Yarad thought hers might have a shot at a Happily Ever After – right up until the day that her husband and collaborator of 23 years revealed his affair with a young woman they’d mentored and considered almost a daughter since she was six years old.
With her stunning, confessional and cathartic new album All These Pretty Things, due out July 7th, Yarad’s life does become a storybook after all, one in which she plays both the damsel in distress and the heroine who saves the day. Ten gorgeous and profoundly moving new songs are accompanied by intimate stories of heartbreak and healing, all beautifully illustrated with bespoke artwork in a lavish hardcover book.
“I started writing these songs just to keep myself from going insane,” Yarad says.“ I didn't realize at the time that it would ever be recorded or performed, it was just my healing process. Ultimately I felt like it could be something that touches people who are going through something similar and are struggling to move through it.”
Originally from Australia and now based in New York City, Yarad’s career has led her through a number of surprising turns and ventured into a wealth of genres, all of which bleed together in captivating ways in the music of All These Pretty Things. As a heart-on-sleeve songwriter with an expressive storyteller’s voice and a vibrant balance of mood and groove, Yarad echoes influences from Laura Nyro to Rickie Lee Jones, Carole King to Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell to Bonnie Raitt. But she’s played classical piano and led a jazz fusion trio, fronted funk bands and sang German lieder, performed with Brazilian and Latin bands – and even spent seven years living with her ex in a Japanese hotel room while singing Top 40 hits in Hilton lounges across Asia.
For the album she’s gathered a top-notch group of musicians uniquely able to explore all of those influences and Yarad’s unique blend while vividly capturing the direct emotion of each deeply felt lyric. Along with Yarad on vocals and piano, the group includes guitarist Luca Benedetti (Jim Campilongo), bassist Tony Scherr (Norah Jones, Bill Frisell), violinist Zach Brock (Snarky Puppy, Stanley Clarke), drummer Josh Dion (Chuck Loeb, Bob James), and organist Jon Cowherd (Brian Blade Fellowship, Joni Mitchell).
The stories that parallel each song, accessible via a QR code in the book as well as on a CD included in the cover, are each illustrated by a distinct Australian artist, including Donna Rankin, Chloe Cook-Williams, ‘natchie’, Michelle Hungerford, Deta C. Rayner, Rowen Matthews, Mathew Lynn, Ingrid Haydon, Tania Ackerman, and the singer’s nephew, Benjamin Yarad.
Yarad crossed paths with most of the musicians through her work with the Brooklyn performance space Soapbox Gallery or her role as a music photographer, through which she’s contributed to publications like DownBeat, Guitar Player, and Drum Scene. “Living in New York is like being in a candy store,” she says. “It really felt like a dream to have access to such a beautiful team of people. Everything that’s resulted from coming to this city has felt like a blessing.”
Yarad moved to NYC in 2017, the U.S. being one of the few places she’d never toured with her ex-husband. Their love story begins All These Pretty Things like something out of a novel – quite literally, as the first story, “Mr. and Mrs. Darcy,” draws parallels to the protagonists of Pride and Prejudice. It accompanies the lovely, swooning “Soul Love,” during which she and Brock pair off on a foreboding wedding march. The upbeat “Still the Girl” accompanies the couple’s whirlwind, offbeat life together, before it all comes crashing down on the fragile “Things” and the tempestuous “Storm Brewing.”Scherr’s ominous rumble sets the tone for the tale’s nadir, the tragic “What a Mess to Clean” – the title of its accompanying story, “Armageddon,” speaks to the way a moment of upheaval can feel like the end of the world. The bluesy, resonant “Never Brought Me Flowers” reflects the way that memories can look different in the harsh light of hindsight, while “Home” is a tender ballad of displacement and self-realization. This is where the story takes a turn, leading into a suite of songs that look resolutely forward with hope reborn.
That search for home led Yarad to the States, to New York, and to a new family of musicians, but more importantly it led her back to the piano and to the stage. “The piano is where I've always felt at home,” she says. “I'm in a safe place when I'm sitting there. Even on stage, I feel comfortable. Music has always been my most loyal relationship. You put the same amount of work and practice into it that you put into relationships with people, but music has never betrayed me.”