Nick Ward lines up his second album, Year Of The Snake

Nick Ward has announced his second album. Year Of The Snake is out on 13 November through EMI Music Australia, and the Australian artist introduced it with the lead single Piano, which is built on a sample of Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Piano was written and co-produced with Kody Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Timon Martin, who has worked with BENEE and Babe Rainbow. It has been described as restless and schizophrenic, which sets the terms for a record that follows 2024's House With The Blue Door.

The album came out of a difficult stretch. Relationship breakdowns and isolation fed into it, and Ward has framed it as an attempt to work through that rather than to document it, drawing on the myth of Orpheus, whose descent into the underworld became a parallel for his own period.

He was explicit about what he wanted to avoid. "I didn't want to make a depressing album wallowing about what it's like to be alive right now," he said, describing a record meant to feel like a warm hand on the shoulder without pretending the darker shades are not there.

It was made between Auckland and Sydney, with contributions from Timon Martin, Kody Nielson, 1tbsp, Simon Lam, Lucian Rice, Tony Buchen, Kirin J Callinan and Phoebe Go. The Beach Boys, David Bowie, Steely Dan, Animal Collective and Fiona Apple were the reference points for the sound.

Ward has called it the first fully realised record under his name, noting that his first album was made almost entirely in his bedroom and that this was the first time he built something at a larger scale. Australian pop has been productive lately, with What So Not returning to his trap roots on a new EP, even as ARIA banned wholly AI generated tracks from the official charts. The November date is on the release calendar.