Album News

Oliver Birch Unveils His Coming-of-Age Album ‘To Remember’

Singer-songwriter Oliver Birch has been doing a lot of thinking the last few years and he processed it all into his new album ‘To Remember.’

Published

2 years ago

02/29/2024

Aaron Willschick

Oliver Birch, photo by Calum Dewsnap

Article Views: 1,574

As an artist and a person, Oliver Birch has decided to live life to the fullest. Much of that initiative lies within his brand new album, To Remember. The new ten-track collection was released on February 9th. This is Birch’s sophomore effort, the follow-up to his 2022 debut full-length Burning Daylight.

Birch is a 25-year-old singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist from Auckland, New Zealand. He took care of all the performing, mixing, and mastering, a total solo effort that was somewhat of a therapeutic experience. It helped offer Birch some much-needed perspective when he needed some.

As he explains:

“I’d started to realize that (at the ripe old age of 26) I was spending too much time looking back rather than forward. I think since COVID I’ve felt stuck, and as though I’d left behind the most exciting period of my life. This album was my process of trying to figure out what I was missing and what I felt I’d left behind; how to recapture that excitement and start living again.

“Each song (apart from the first and last track) roughly corresponds with a key typical scene in a coming-of-age film too, which is a genre of film I’ve always loved. I wanted the whole thing to feel raw and full of life. I love big, obviously emotional, cinematic type-stuff, and there’s a lot of that on this album.”

The last few years have been a period of transition for Birch. To Remember can be looked at as a method of him in a sense connecting the past with the present, with a view to the future. It was a fairly ambitious recording project as well, especially considering the time in which it was recorded. Musically, the album combines experimental and baroque pop with alternative pop, shoegaze, new wave, and singer-songwriter music. It fits very much within today’s alternative and indie scene while making its unique statement. Birch intends to use this album as a catapult to a new musical era for him, in addition to a new state of mind.