Awning Sign to Winspear and Share “Little Green Book”

Auckland band Awning have signed to Winspear, becoming the Los Angeles independent label’s second international act after Melbourne’s Swapmeet. Their first single for the label, “Little Green Book,” is out now.

The track moves quickly and keeps its edges. Discordant guitar blasts cut across the verses before opening into a chorus where vocalist Christian Dimick pushes his voice into raw, distorted territory. It is guitar music organised around pressure rather than release, the noise arriving exactly where a more conventional song would settle into comfort.

Dimick says the song is about grief, material he found hard to force into a standard lyric. His solution was to keep the imagery open and cryptic, putting distance between himself and the listener. That obscurity, he explains, gives him privacy while allowing someone else to attach their own meaning to the song. He also concedes that not every line is oblique: “I want to remember what you said” and “Grief is a corner” sit plainly in the text. His summary of the instinct behind them is the sharpest thing about the release. We carry people’s words around for them after they are gone.

Damin McCabe directed the video.