One Is Always Heading Somewhere is Womb’s third album, recorded throughout 2023 and 2024, between living rooms and bedrooms of various houses across the country – from the trio’s hometown of Te Whanganui-a-Tara to their new homes of Whanganui, Whakatū, and Tāmaki Makaurau. Additional recording was done at their dear friend Bevan Smith’s backyard studio, Circle Blue Studios, with mixing done with their new collaborator De Stevens at Roundhead Studios.
The album builds musically from where their previous albums – Like Splitting the Head from the Body and Dreaming of the Future Again – left off. While still harbouring their signature emotive and ethereal sound, Womb’s third album sees the three moving toward a more refined style. The arrangements are layered and warm, where Georgette's driving drums are met with percussive samples, Haz’s cinematic synths swirl and rise, and Cello’s textured strings stretch across the tracks. There are also sparser moments that draw you to Cello’s direct and often melancholic vocal delivery.
Lyrically, the songs trace moments across the two years recording the album, drawing on the repeated imagery that characterises Cello’s days: of driving, of dreaming, of light on water, or in the sky. Each song is both personal and allegorical, diaristic and metaphoric – each looking at connection and the things we are tethered to.
Womb - One Is Always Heading Somewhere
- One Is Always Heading Somewhere
- Only You
- Slip
- Angels
- Unto
- Georgie's Song
- Just Like Waves
- Interlude #2
- Erosion
- Take (ft. Ben Woods)
- Sometimes
-
O.I.A.H.S.
“These twelve songs are a collection of moments throughout a span of time in our lives – the oldest song [Erosion] written ten years ago. Because these songs are often diaristic in nature, having self-recorded nearly everything at the various homes we’ve lived in feels very special – I can hear the creak of my old chair, the sound of cars going by on the street I used to live on, the tap of the space bar on my laptop as I finish recording.” – Cello Forrester
The album art is a photograph taken by Haz Forrester on a long bus ride through the top of Te Waipounamu. The image is overlain by four cut-out shapes drawn by Georgette, which reference similar shapes found in diaries kept by abstract artist Hilma af Klint.
Whilst forming in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa, music has always been central to the siblings’ relationship. In the flat cornfield suburbs of the American midwest, Georgette would share Limewire mp3s between the three. Before then their three older siblings would show them music when they lived in a Eucalyptus forest near Daylesford, Australia. After moving to Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa in their teenage years, the three grew alongside the music community they found there.
Since their inception, Womb have released their first self-titled Womb EP (Sonorous Circle, 2015), their debut album Like Splitting the Head from the Body (Arcade Recordings and Sonorous Circle, 2018), a second EP, Holding a Flame (Flying Nun Records, 2021), and their sophomore album, Dreaming of the Future Again (Flying Nun Records, 2022).
