Zoh Amba share single ‘Eyes Full’
TITLE TRACK FROM MATADOR DEBUT ALBUM
OUT JUNE 5
ANNOUNCES UK, EUROPEAN & US HEADLINE AND
FESTIVAL SHOWS
+ DATES THIS SUMMER WITH COURTNEY BARNETT AND FOLK BITCH TRIO
Credit: Eleonore Hendricks
In April, Zoh Amba announced their Matador debut album Eyes Full, out June 5th, an album of tough and soulful songs that feel like a pure transmission from the heart. Today, Amba shares the album’s pensive and darkly hypnotic title track, a song about what makes someone’s heart full and questioning why. It’s accompanied by a video directed by Grace Bader Conrad, featuring Amba and album musicians Jim White (drums) and Kevin Hyland (electric guitar). Watch/listen HERE.
Following a recent sold out headline show at New York’s Nightclub 101 previewing songs from the new album and performing in Coachella as part of Iggy Pop’s band, Zoh Amba today also announces a run of UK, European and US headline and festival dates. The European leg kicks off October 29th at Rockomotives Festival in France and includes UK stops in Bristol, London, Manchester and Glasgow. Prior to that, they will tour the US throughout the summer supporting Folk Bitch Trio and Courtney Barnett. A full list of tour dates is below.
‘Eyes Full’ follows first single ‘Another Time’, on which The Guardian said, “the free jazz saxophonist turns equally remarkable songwriter for a record that twists their Appalachian roots with openhearted, choppy indie rock”, and Stereogum in their Best 5 Songs of the Week noted, “that voice, along with those lyrics about being lost and seeking transcendence, make for pure beauty, rustic country-rock style.”
Eyes Full is distinctly, instinctively tied to Zoh’s hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee and the rediscovery of their first instrument, the guitar. The album courses with a type of muddy, loose acoustic blues, punctuated with bursts of feedback-laden electric guitar and sweet burnishes of Appalachian folk. It’s a remarkable turn for an artist who has already become one of the most exciting saxophonists to emerge from NYC’s avant-garde scene.
In music, Amba is always striving for greater proximity to the divine. On Eyes Full, they’ve never come closer. Every song circles the idea of seeing and being seen. The record looks closely at the lives of working-class folk in small towns who bust their asses off while trying to find any salvation they can. “I hope these songs touch people’s hearts,” Amba says. “They’re about people who really need to be seen and heard.”
For years, Amba tried to find an identity outside of where they came from. Raised in the mountain towns of Tennessee, they left at seventeen for San Francisco, then moved to New York City soon after. Yet no matter how far they traveled, home always wrapped itself around their ankle. “When you try to run from something it ends up catching up to you,” they say now, speaking in a thick Southern drawl they no longer attempt to hide. “And you have to deal with it.”
Though Amba had long believed that pure instrumental music could help souls, and that transcendence could be reached without language, words eventually pushed their way in. While playing saxophone, they often felt as though they were being carried heavenward: their body burning, tears rising, the music opening a direct line to God. But alongside that ecstasy came flashes of darker childhood memories. The guitar became a way to face those visions directly, to hold them at eye level rather than flee. They sang their way through it, and back to Kingsport.
Growing up, Amba watched their small town pass through a difficult, destabilizing period. For a time, they tried to keep that reality at arm’s length, only later recognizing how thin the line was between themselves and those who suffered most. They grew a greater sense of grace and understanding for these people. Each song on Eyes Full, which is entirely character-driven — from the kid benumbed by medication (‘OCD’) to the weed-eating man who plays hide-and-seek with God (‘Weed Eating’) — is an act of love for them. “They all deserve to go to heaven,” says Amba, rejecting the punitive theology that surrounded them in the Bible Belt. Songs about damnation never made sense to them; what interested them instead was mercy, and the possibility of redemption.
The record was tracked live at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, an hour from Amba’s hometown, with no overdubs. Their best friend Kevin Hyland plays electric guitar, while drummer Jim White, whom Amba met on the streets of New York years earlier and now calls the closest thing they’ve had to a family, plays drums. The three musicians rehearsed relentlessly, playing together all day, every day. White and Amba play interlocked, while Amba and Hyland weave around one another, Amba playing rhythm and Hyland playing lead; currents of life running alongside one another.
The music itself sounds moonshine-drunk, Amba’s voice snarling and fiery, their guitar slowing then gathering speed like a steam train edging off the tracks. They veer suddenly between abrasion and gentleness. One moment they’re all teeth, the next, they go soft and still. On ‘Emahoy,’ they play a drowsy and velveted guitar line while singing with unguarded tenderness about the sadness dancing in their soul.
Standout ‘Southern Soil’ is the song with the most stakes, its eyes the most difficult for Amba to look into. “When that song finally came to me, I was like oh shit. I could have cried.” It was a feeling Amba had been trying to get to the bottom of their entire life: the reason their heart would swell at a show only to deflate again once they returned to the hotel room. Writing it filled and emptied them at once. Addressed to the people who first taught them what could and couldn’t be said, it confronts the silence that shaped much of their young life. The lyric “you don’t have to keep a secret,” the most hard-fought of them all, is Amba’s triumph over pain with grace. They consider it one of the greatest achievements of their life.
Eyes Full is a lesson in how to look and to stay open to the universe, and to all the hearts that inhabit it. Through Amba’s gaze, the album restores spirit and dignity to those who are often overlooked or dispossessed. Across Eyes Full, Amba sings for people who rarely see themselves reflected back with tenderness. The music carries an ache for communities pushed to the margins, for those growing numb or losing touch with their innermost sense of self. These songs insist on sustained attention: on looking closely, meeting another person’s gaze, and refusing to look away.
(hi-res)
1. OCD
2. Another Time
3. Dead End Street
4. Thousand Years
5. Southern Soil
6. Eyes Full
7. Blueberry Thorn
8. Emahoy
9. Weed Eating
10. Odd Jobs
11. Child You’ll See
12. PG Tips
13. Smile With Your Eyes
ZOH AMBA TOUR DATES
Thu May 7 – Asheville, NC – Revival %
Fri May 8 – Atlanta, GA – Vinyl %
Sat May 9 – Nashville, TN – Blue Room %
Mon May 11 – Houston, TX – White Oak %
Tue May 12 – Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom %
Wed May 13 – Dallas, TX – Deep Ellum Arts %
Sat June 27 – Spring Creek, NC – Lighting Bug Festival
Thu July 30 – Philadelphia, PA – Silk City
Fri July 31 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
Sat Aug 1 – Washington, DC – Pearl Street Warehouse
Mon Aug 3 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
Tue Aug 4 – Atlanta, GA – The EARL
Fri Aug 7 – Toronto, ON – Sound Garage
Sun Aug 9 – Chicago, IL – Schubas Tavern
Tue Aug 11 – Cleveland, OH – Agora Theater #
Wed Aug 12 – Pittsburgh, PA – Roxian Theatre #
Fri Aug 14 – Cincinnati, OH – Megacorp Pavilion #
Sat Aug 15 – Kansas City, MO – The Truman #
Fri Aug 21 – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom #
Sat Aug 22 – Salt Lake City, UT – Rockwell at the Complex #
Mon Aug 24 – Sacramento, CA – Channel 24 #
Wed Aug 26 – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore #
Sat Aug 29 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium #
Tue Sept 1 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
Wed Sept 2 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe Du Nord
Fri Sept 4 – Portland, OR – Show Bar
Sat Sept 5 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret
Wed Sept 9 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
Thu 29 Oct 2026 – Vendôme, FR – Rockomotives Festival
Fri 30 Oct 2026 – Paris, FR – La Boule Noire (Les Femmes S’en Mêlent)
Sat 31 Oct 2026 – Amsterdam, NL – London Calling Festival
Mon 02 Nov 2026 – Hamburg – Aalhaus
Tue 03 Nov 2026 – Berlin, DE – Kantine am Berghain
Thu 05 Nov 2026 – Brussels, BE – Botanique
Fri 06 Nov 2026 – Den Haag, NL – Crossing Border Festival
Sat 07 Nov 2026 – Groningen, NL – TakeRoot Festival
Sun 08 Nov 2026 – Kortrijk, BE – Sonic City Festival
Tue 10 Nov 2026 – Amiens, FR – La Lune des Pirates
Thu 12 Nov 2026 – Bristol, UK – The Louisiana
Fri 13 Nov 2026 – London, UK – The Lexington
Sat 14 Nov 2026 – Manchester, UK – Gullivers
Sun 15 Nov 2026 – Glasgow, UK – The Hug and Pint
% w/ Folk Bitch Trio
# w/ Courtney Barnett