The tour, supporting Liv.e’s latest album Girl in the Half Pearl, will include five UK dates in Leeds, Liverpool, Dublin, Manchester, and London. The artist will travel to Europe in June before heading to Australia and finishing in Japan. Liv.e is also performing at Øyafestivalen and Lowlands Festival this August. For tickets and more information see here.

hay now us tour finished for now this spring/summa lookin thiq!! europe, australia & japan! pic.twitter.com/3A02Ap8h42

— Liv.e (@oliveosun) April 4, 2023

The Dallas-born Los Angeles-based singer started the first leg of her tour in March playing dates across North America including a few sold-out shows. She’ll also be performing on the Stephen Colbert Late Show this Friday the 7^th April.

25-year-old Olivia Dean, also known as Liv.e, didn’t originally plan on a musical career having grown up in a family of musicians. Her dad played Blues and was embedded in the Gospel scene and her brother is a drummer. However, after finishing a degree in architecture and object design at the School of the Institute of Chicago Art she decided on a career switch. Her debut EP F.R.A.N.K. dropped in 2017 and the following year her EP Hoopdreams won her fans in Erykah Badu and Earl Sweatshirt. After touring with Earl on his Fire It Up Tour in 2019 and featuring on his EP Feet of Clay her popularity only grew. In 2020, she released her debut album Couldn’t Wait to Tell You to critical acclaim.

The singer’s sophomore album Girl in the Half Pearl was released on 10^th February. It’s a mosaic of genres meshing neo-soul, alt R&B, and hypnagogic pop sometimes with jungle beats and at others with a touch of psychedelia. It’s no surprise that it has been praised by Pitchfork, Loud and Quiet, and Vulture magazine.

Liv.e’s struggles with heartbreak are evident in Girl in the Half Pearl. The singer told Pitchfork: “I didn’t have anybody to talk talk to, so I wrote this album. I had to get this shit out of me. That’s why I’m so glad the album is out, because I feel like an open wound that’s hitting the wind. It feels nasty, but it feels kinda like, “Ahhhh”.

Watch the video for the album’s lead single “Ghost” here:

See below for Liv.e’s UK and Europe tour dates:

21/05/23 – Headrow House – Leeds
22/05 – 24 Kitchen Street – Liverpool
24/05 – Workmans Club – Dublin
25/05 – Yes – Manchester
26/05– ICA – London
31/05 – Le Hasard Ludique – Paris
10/08– Øyafestivalen – Oslo
18/08 – Lowlands Festival – Biddinghuizen

SICK! follows in a similar pattern. Where Doris was Earl trying to assert himself through Odd Future sensibilities, and I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside was his escape from one confine (Odd Future) into another (inside), Some Rap Songs and SICK! represent Earl finding a new freedom. While still very much a depressive individual, he has found freedom in acceptance, in not fighting against his demons but sitting around and passing them backwoods.

While his prior albums tried to uphold his status as a lyric wordsmith, one of the best in the game at the time, Some Rap Songs and now SICK! don’t pack in the rhymes but instead find soulfulness in deliberate and selective word choice. Much of these lyrics sound like real poetry: “Callin’ out for Lord, lookin’ low and high / Finally found it at the core of my dimming fire / What’s a little lie? What’s a little lie?” A far cry from the unabashed misogyny of his early albums that he has been spending all of his adult life trying to distance himself from, Earl has spent the last half-a-decade withdrawing into himself. We are lucky to be treated with what he find and drags out for us in there.

SICK! is slightly more heavy on features than his previous project, with Zeelooperz and Armand Hammer taking up significant time on their two respective tracks. However, it still feels like a solo project with his individuality asserted in every bar. Earl Sweatshirt, real name Thebe Kgositsile, impresses once more.

Earl’s management reached out to Pitchfork with a full statement explaining the cancellation, citing mental health reasons as the primary reason. They also stated that Earl, real name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, was “simply unable to” perform due to ongoing grief over the death of his father, who passed in January.

Thebe’s father was a prominent South African poet named Keorapetse Kgositsile, who passed away at age 79. Thebe cancelled a string of dates in the wake of his death, but “thought he would be ready to perform” in time for his UK dates. Unfortunately, he found his existing battle with anxiety and depression “compounded by the grief from the recent passing of his father”.

The statement concluded with an apology to fans, and a promise to be back “as soon as he is able”.  Thebe last released music in 2015, producing his second full-length LP ‘I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside’, in March of that year.

Sweatshirt hasn’t released new music since 2015’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, but has stayed active with both gigs, and his radio show ‘Stay Inside’ with hip-hop producer and songwriter Knxwledge. Earl was also confirmed to be joining The XX and Kelela during their tour of Australia in January 2018.

You can see a clip of the as-yet-unnamed track being played during Earl’s set below.

Whilst the new music will excite Earl’s fans, they’ll also be aware that the rapper previewing new tracks is quite a common occurrence, both during live sets, and during his aforementioned radio broadcasts.

As far back as last year, Earl was premiering three new songs during a Canadian festival, with the rapper telling the crowd “This brings me to my favorite part of every show, when I start doing new shit.”

In June, Earl debuted the track ‘Hat Trick’ during a live ‘Stay Inside’ broadcast in Detroit, having performed it live a month prior. During the recording, some playback error occurred however, and the LA rapper had laugh off his momentary stumble, telling the crowd at the Movement Festival “Detroit, make some noise for human error”. You can listen to the full version below.