Gordi – aka Los Angeles-via-Canowindra’s Sophie Payten - has learned the hard way of the need to be malleable, to form and reform in response to her environment and circumstances and self. "It's awful and really beautiful." The pandemic – a moment where we all lost control of our reliable structures and were instead completely shaped by our surroundings – prompted Payten to think about "What are the moments where you really transform in your life? And I think grief is one of those things. Love is one of those things. Queerness is one of those things. And so is the going into the next phase of life."

Those factors converge on Lunch at Dune, a standout early hint of the new chapter for Gordi, a track which unites Gordi and SOAK, the Northern Irish folk artist and Mercury-prize winning singer-songwriter, born Bridie Monds-Watson.

At a cafe in London in early 2020, "the whole world was burning down" and so too was Payten's interior life.

“The song is about feeling like there is something insurmountable in front of you and the only way through is perspective. In ‘Lunch at Dune’, I’m trying to give that perspective to someone I love”, Payten continues.

The metaphorical internal burning down was mirrored by the crumbling of the world around her.

“I was sitting at the kitchen table of an Airbnb in East London in the last week of February in 2020. It was cold and dark outside, and the streets were unnervingly silent. Refreshing my Twitter feed every 2 minutes to see which country had closed its borders, I wondered if I’d be able to get home, as the panic around the pandemic was swirling. I sat in the crippling uncertainty for a minute, and began to write. The next day I finished what became ‘Lunch at Dune’ in a small studio in Camden in the northern part of London.”

Payten had been a fan of SOAK for some time, and after seeing them perform in New York, knew they'd provide the missing piece Lunch at Dune needed. I know the pressure you feel seems relentless / But everything is fleeting / Except you and I.

It's a gift of a song, and the artists' voices wrap around one another in a sonic world that builds and grows, rises up and spreads out like a protective forcefield around only those who matter. They sound both wounded and healing at once, lost and certain.

Through mutual friends, their lives intertwined many years later, and as is the way in the 21st century, Bridie and Sophie became internet pen pals.

“I recently flew to Dublin not long ago to meet Bridie and film some stuff. We spent a good part of the weekend wandering around Dublin where I learned how to split the G of a Guinness, and concluded that the Leprechaun Museum is criminally underrated. I ate an Irish Spice Bag for the first time, also highly rated”.

Her counterpart SOAK offered, “as a longtime fan of Gordi I was so hyped when she reached out to ask me to sing on this track. Something I've always found mesmerising about her work is that each song feels like its own little universe. I think ‘Lunch at Dune’ is a great example of this, a world of its own. I was less hyped when Sophie asked me to jump in the freezing Irish sea at the start of winter for the video but I obliged and have since returned to my normal skin tone".

But before dips in the Irish sea and greasy boxes of fried rice, the recording was finished a while after that initial London trip a couple years back – this time across the Atlantic in Durham, North Carolina.  Payten enlisted her friend Brad Cook (Snail Mail, Bon Iver, Waxahatchee) to co-produce “Lunch At Dune”, with whom she’d collaborated previously. 

“I first met Brad when we were both playing Eaux Claires Festival a few years back, and I jumped up to sing with his band Big Red Machine. I did the same when we were hanging out in Berlin for the PEOPLE residency. Fall was the perfect time to visit Durham and I spent 10 days with Brad in his studio. When we were recording the vocals, I felt overcome with sadness because I was plunged back into that lonely time, right before the world shut down, when I wrote “Lunch at Dune”.

Woven into the future-focussed act of reexamining and rebuilding is a sense of optimism. Maybe it's a holistic ease, the responsibilities that working as a doctor have brought on – something she explored when returning to the frontline late in the pandemic. Whether it’s resolution or resignation, it has brought out a more extraverted artistic self in the singer-songwriter.

"There is something in the next phase of what I’m making that feels much more celebratory than I think I've ever really explored before. It's found me so content in exactly who I am, which is something I feel like some people never get to – but if you have to go right to the depths, then maybe you can resurface a lot quicker."