Bodywash Announce New Album, “I Held The Shape While I Could”

Montreal duo Bodywash has announced their new album, I Held the Shape While I Could, out April 14th, 2023, on Light Organ Records. Additionally, the band has shared their lead single, “Massif Central”.

I Held the Shape While I Could’ features twelve tracks, which sees Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter reflect on their separate and shared experiences of losing a sense of place, the way something once solid can slip between your fingers, and their attempts to build something new from the fallout. For their lead single “Massif Central”, Steward reflects on an experience of bureaucratic purgatory: a typo in a government letter caused Steward to lose his legal work status in Canada.

“After eight years living in Canada, in the Spring of 2021, a government clerical error caused me to lose my legal status here,” Steward explains. “As a UK national, I lost my right to work. My savings trickled away during months where I could do little but pace the corners of my apartment. I was prepared to pack my bags and leave as the life I’d hoped to construct for myself seemed to vanish into a bureaucratic abyss.”

The accompanying video by Jordan Allen (Broken Social Scene, Sam Roberts Band) is a stunning collage of live footage, distorted visuals, and eerie graphics. “With “Massif Central”, we wanted to encapsulate the panic and urgency that Chris experienced, and have the abstracts portray the anxiety and hopelessness one can feel at the hands of bureaucracy,” Allen adds. “I chose graphics that heavily leaned into feelings of being lost in a maze, with towering structures and horizon lines pulling you into them. The idea was that the camera would be both a CCTV view of the band, but also glitching to reveal the more emotionally internal visual aspects.”