Seven years since she last delved into the cave of wonder and beautifully pieced together an ensemble of rare gems which hadn’t been recorded previously, Rumer delivers the second instalment of what she described as “what everybody was telling me that they wanted” as B Sides and Rarities Vol. 2. The album which is released on April 22nd through Cooking Vinyl (available HERE) features tracks from the vault that she had worked on during projects prior to the first instalment of B Sides and Rarities in addition to her projects since.
We recently caught up with her ahead of the release (which you can read HERE) where we talked about moving back to the UK, her upcoming appearance at The Long Road Festival later this summer and to learn a little more about this album which she decided to record because “people were asking for it” and she thought “sure I can do that, I can pull that together.”
The writing credits amongst the tracks is highly eclectic but also a magical list for her to bring her own interpretations to songs penned by the likes of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Carly Simon, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Van Morrison, The Bee Gees, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, Simon Aldred, Donald Henry and Jonathan Vezner and Hugh Prestwood. In addition to gems created during recording “This Girl’s in Love”, “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Nashville Tears” which contain her blissful interpretation of songs that you will know all too well such as the timeless Bee Gees classic “How Deep Is Your Love” and Elton John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” which is one of the standouts of the collection, she also has found a home for songs that she really liked but didn’t quite find their way onto “Into Colour” back in 2014.
The dreamy sounds that she conveys so well through “Roses” and “Old-Fashioned Girl” showcase her own craft as a songwriter and does make you wonder why these tracks had previously been unreleased. An album that is bringing sounds and songs from different projects or eras doesn’t always go as fluently as volume 2 of B Sides and Rarities but it really works and if you didn’t know any differently it feels like a purely cohesive project. From our first interview we had talked about wine (she realised that her fans enjoyed listening to her music with a nice bottle in the garden, so created wine labels for the Nashville Tears album that she would send out with orders of the record) and this on the face of it may look like mixing some red, white, rose and bubbles across an evening but by trying to give the fans something that they wanted, Rumer managed to blend together the perfect vintage for spring in 2022.
B Sides and Rarities Vol. 2Tracklisting: 1. Roses (Rumer) 2. You’re The One (Carly Simon) 3. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Elton John, Bernie Taupin) 4. Anyone Who Had A Heart (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) 5. I Wanna Roo You (Van Morrison) 6. The Windows of The World (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) 7. Never Arrive (Hugh Prestwood) 8. Old-Fashioned Girl (Rumer, Rob Shirakbari) 9. How Deep Is Your Love (Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb) 10. My Lover Lies Under (Simon Aldred) 11. Wives and Lovers (ft. Rory More) (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) 12. The Folks Who Live on The Hill (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein) 13. Where’ve You Been? (Donald Henry, Jonathan Vezner) The new album “B Sides and Rarities Vol.2” from Rumer is out now through Cooking Vinyl, which is available HERE. Meanwhile you can keep up to date with her socially by following her on FacebookTwitterInstagram.