On their first album in five years, Cloher finally breathes out. I Am The River, The River Is Me, their fifth album, is verdant and rich; it luxuriates in stillness, and carries itself with cool, unfussy confidence. It suggests that home is not found in a place or a politic, but in the community you keep: Inspired by Cloher’s powerful matrilineal line of wāhine Māori, I Am The River, The River Is Me is not urgent, or hurried, but it is vital, made with the care and ease of someone who knows that their past began before birth, and will continue long after they’re gone.

To support the album release, Jen Cloher also announces their first ever headline shows in Aotearoa. Cloher will perform two special shows on Friday 28th July at Whammy, Auckland  and Saturday 29th July at Meow, Wellington.  Tickets go on sale from Friday 3rd March, 9am. 

“It’s fitting that my first ever headline shows in Aotearoa will be in support of my fifth album, Ko au the awa, Ko te awa ko au. The album is a homecoming. An honouring of my powerful matrilineal line of wāhine Māori and the first time I have had the confidence to write and perform in my reo” shares Cloher. “ The album was recorded in Naarm (Melbourne) and Tāmaki Makaurau over the lockdown. Recordings were sent across the Tasman arriving each morning with little Easter eggs of new ideas. On the Aotearoa side I had the great pleasure of collaborating with Te Kaahu (Waikato-Tainui, Ngaati Tiipaa), Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) as well as Tom Healy and Cass Basil of Tiny Ruins.”

Finding yourself, finding your home, is an unruly, never-ending process; I Am The River, The River Is Me is not a perfect self-portrait, and it possesses no universal truth about what it means to be Māori, or to be wahine toa (a strong woman), or to be takatāpui, or even to be Jen Cloher. Instead, it captures something else — a picture of humanity and community as a gorgeous, unfathomable mess. The joy of life, Cloher seems to say, is in forgiving your moments of weakness with grace, and embracing the parts of you that are unfinished. On 'Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu', they put it simply, and perfectly: “I may have come late, but better late than never.”

Cloher shares “the album cover photo was taken in my awa (river), Te Touwai in Matangirau, Te Tai Tokerau (Northland) Aotearoa (New Zealand). It is the river that my mother, grandmother and great grandmother bathed in, watered their gardens from and cared for. The day my dear friend Hera Tautoko-Orme took the photo was as freezing as the photo looks. We waded out in our bathing suits and stood in the middle of the river while it rained. When I finally surrendered to the cold something shifted and I felt that feeling of coming home—the presence of the wāhine Māori that I have come through and my connection and kinship with Te Touwai Awa. The whakataukī hit different now - ‘I am the river, the river is me.’ “