AMP finalist Abbe May announces new album, releases new single

It's been a year since Abbe May released her critically acclaimed fifth album Fruit which saw the queer, Western Australian land a spot as a finalist in this year's $30,000 Australian Music Prize.
Now, she offers a follow up in her new single Fuck You, a country-infused track about recovering from a fragile, vulnerable place with a clear message.
Fuck You is the first taste of what will be Abbe's sixth album Red Flag.
The months after the release of her last album saw Abbe take time to recover from the emotional trauma of her past; to sit back and really take stock of where she really is and where she wants to go.
"I've been so consistently happy for about eight months now, so it's strange to look back and think upon how I've been just recovering from a really low time in my life by shutting myself off from anything social and just playing my acoustic guitar. And of course, all these country songs just kept coming out," said Abbe.
The result of that healing is Fuck You, a song that goes beyond assigning responsibility for trauma continuing to self-care and putting yourself together when you've been taken down.
"Fuck You is about escaping a time when I felt very frightened in social situations. For a time I sincerely was too frightened to leave my house, I couldn't sleep and I felt like I was going insane. I think because I have such great periods of life I know by contrast when I am in need of help," said Abbe.
"So, I had some kind of breakdown. The second I can identify in my life. But my breakdown was ultimately a breakthrough, and I no longer let myself shrink around bullies. So, Fuck You is me reclaiming my sanity and taking my power back."
Fans of Abbe would already be familiar with Fuck You with the track making its first appearances on her Fruit tour last year, taking her already intimate shows to a new, personal level shaping and sharing her story of recovery with her audience.
"I started playing Fuck You when I was touring Fruit and the audiences were just so consistently excited by it, I knew I had something that connected. I guess the subject is so relatable, but I wasn't sure I wanted to make myself this vulnerable, you know, it's a pretty brutal tale and I felt like such a fool recovering from it," said Abbe.
"So, Fuck You took a lot of time and thought and therapy to get to a place where I felt ready to make my own foolishness and vulnerability permanently public beyond the intimacy of my live shows, I don't particularly like being this vulnerable but I don't really know how else to make the music good."
Fuck You is the first of something new from Abbe May, she'll be taking her strong attitude, resilience and core musical talent and applying it to a genre she's never broached before.
"I make the music I want to hear. I've made most other kinds of music, so now I want to try make a country record, I'm going to call it Red Flag. I like the way you can't rely on production with country music, the really good stuff can be played with just an acoustic and still blow your head off. I wanna see if I'm good enough songwriter to make a country album. I want to do whatever the fuck I want, with whomever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want, because I could be dead in a second... so I guess it's a country album with Matt Gio on production this year."
Now, she offers a follow up in her new single Fuck You, a country-infused track about recovering from a fragile, vulnerable place with a clear message.
Fuck You is the first taste of what will be Abbe's sixth album Red Flag.
The months after the release of her last album saw Abbe take time to recover from the emotional trauma of her past; to sit back and really take stock of where she really is and where she wants to go.
"I've been so consistently happy for about eight months now, so it's strange to look back and think upon how I've been just recovering from a really low time in my life by shutting myself off from anything social and just playing my acoustic guitar. And of course, all these country songs just kept coming out," said Abbe.
The result of that healing is Fuck You, a song that goes beyond assigning responsibility for trauma continuing to self-care and putting yourself together when you've been taken down.
"Fuck You is about escaping a time when I felt very frightened in social situations. For a time I sincerely was too frightened to leave my house, I couldn't sleep and I felt like I was going insane. I think because I have such great periods of life I know by contrast when I am in need of help," said Abbe.
"So, I had some kind of breakdown. The second I can identify in my life. But my breakdown was ultimately a breakthrough, and I no longer let myself shrink around bullies. So, Fuck You is me reclaiming my sanity and taking my power back."
Fans of Abbe would already be familiar with Fuck You with the track making its first appearances on her Fruit tour last year, taking her already intimate shows to a new, personal level shaping and sharing her story of recovery with her audience.
"I started playing Fuck You when I was touring Fruit and the audiences were just so consistently excited by it, I knew I had something that connected. I guess the subject is so relatable, but I wasn't sure I wanted to make myself this vulnerable, you know, it's a pretty brutal tale and I felt like such a fool recovering from it," said Abbe.
"So, Fuck You took a lot of time and thought and therapy to get to a place where I felt ready to make my own foolishness and vulnerability permanently public beyond the intimacy of my live shows, I don't particularly like being this vulnerable but I don't really know how else to make the music good."
Fuck You is the first of something new from Abbe May, she'll be taking her strong attitude, resilience and core musical talent and applying it to a genre she's never broached before.
"I make the music I want to hear. I've made most other kinds of music, so now I want to try make a country record, I'm going to call it Red Flag. I like the way you can't rely on production with country music, the really good stuff can be played with just an acoustic and still blow your head off. I wanna see if I'm good enough songwriter to make a country album. I want to do whatever the fuck I want, with whomever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want, because I could be dead in a second... so I guess it's a country album with Matt Gio on production this year."