The experience of falling in love is one of the most common things in the world, and love songs
are as old as songs themselves. But the love songs that make up Low Tide’s second album,
Bread & Roses (out October 23), aren’t ordinary love songs. Singer and violinist Eli Oberman
said, “I started affectionately referring to them as anti-capitalist love songs. What I mean by that
is that I’m writing about love through the prism of rage. Rage at not being able to love or live
fully because in order to survive, we have to trade the limited hours of our lives for someone
else’s profit.” They joked, “I guess being in love just really makes me want to seize the means of
production, what can I say”.
The sense of time being our most precious resource weaves throughout Bread & Roses. In
“Fire”, Oberman laments, “Our time is not our own. ”As the first single (and opening track) off
Low Tide’s second album, Bread & Roses, “Fire” captures the tension at the heart of the album.
After the lilting 6/8 arpeggios of Courtney Robbins’ opening guitar give way to a quiet chugging
rhythm, singer Eli Oberman begins with the line, “I feel hopelessly worn down” but then follows it
immediately with, “but I light up when you’re around”. And so begins the back and forth between
the exhaustion and frustration they express about daily life and labor and exalting their love as
they stand together by the ocean. They sing, “the waves are a marching band/ praising the glory
of the night/ for you” and then the feelings merge into one as they belt out the chorus, “Fire”, an
expression of both passions, of love and anger. The band’s first album, The Alchemist focused
on the four elements of wind, water, earth, and fire, and while “Fire” sounds brighter and more
optimistic than the songs on The Alchemist, there is continuity in the way Oberman repeatedly
turns to nature as a way of expressing their world. To describe the kinetic quality of their love,
they sing, “the stars start their leaping/ their dancing/ their gleaming in the night/ for you.
Oberman says, “I knew there was something magical about this song right away. I couldn’t stop
playing it to myself, and the first time I performed it people kept coming up to me after singing
the chorus to me”.

In “Back to Me”, “Now that I’m older/ I know what time can do”; In “We Come From Stars”, “Time
is the only currency/ and the price is always too steep/ The hours are unforgiving/ that’s the real
cost of living here”. And in the title track “Bread and Roses” they sing, “Hearts starve as well as
bodies/ give us bread but give us roses”. “That summed up everything for me”, Oberman said of
the song. They continued, “We need to be fighting for more than survival. We need to be
fighting for a world where we can love, make art, be good stewards of the earth, and feed each
others’ spirits”. Oberman grew up in a folk music family where singing together was a regular
activity, and “Bread and Roses”, a women’s labor song from 1911, was always their favorite. So
in classic folk tradition, they decided to write their own version with original music and small
lyrical adaptations. “I made that song the foundation on which I built everything else”, they said.

Oberman and Robbins, who are both trans and nonbinary, formed Low Tide to return to both of
their folk roots after playing together in feminist punk band The Shondes, and Oberman’s voice
and Robbins’ silky electric guitar form the heart of their sound. Robbins’ voice is also a constant
presence in harmonies that both ground and lift up Oberman’s voice, and they sing lead on “Bite

the Hand”. Their voices are a juxtaposition, Robbins’ airy rasp to Oberman’s sweetness, yet
they braid together to create something that feels solid, reliable, something you can relax into.
They recorded Bread & Roses in Brooklyn with their longtime producer and collaborator Fen
Ikner, who also contributed drums, bass and keys to the album. Oberman said, “I wrote most of
these songs in isolation during the pandemic, which isn’t usually how I like to write. So when we
got to the studio, hearing Courtney’s guitar parts layer, hearing the Wurlitzer, the organ, drums
and bass, it felt like I had been there when the songs were born, but this was the first time I felt
them truly come to life”. Robbins added, “The studio felt like a magical little world where the
songs really started to shine. And we wanted this album to feel really human. No AI, no
autotune, just three people playing music in a room together. One of my favorite moments was
when Fen turned an accidental squeak of the drum stool at the beginning of ‘Back to Me’ into a
sample that we used as a rhythm in the song”.

As the album continues to unfurl, Robbins’ lush electric guitar lines and Oberman’s vocals swirl
around each other as love becomes past tense. On “Back to Me”, they sing, “I pray that you’re
safe/ and I pray that you’re free/ and I’m praying you back to me”. “This felt anti-capitalist to me
too,” they explained. “Loving someone doesn’t entitle you to them. Loving someone doesn’t
mean you own them. I might miss someone, wish for a different outcome, but what I wish for
more than anything is for them to be safe and free. To be happy. To find peace”. The result is
something that sounds both yearning and settled, with Robbin’s guitar lines both restrained and
somehow shimmering, comforting. And “I Was Wrong” wrestles with feelings of failure in both
love and work as Oberman sings, “Thought that I could make it/ with the power of my will/
Thought that I could push/ that boulder up the hill, but I was wrong” and “Thought that I knew/
what I saw in your eyes/ but I was wrong” only to find solace in the next song, one of the
sweetest on the album, “All Around Me”. “Love changes you for the better no matter what
happens”, Oberman said. They sing, “People tell me they can see it/ all over me/ People tell me
they can feel it/ all around me/ They say my eyes shine brighter now/ more alive somehow”.
The final track “The Ones Like You” returns to the swaying 6/8 where the album began, but this
time with a sense of pensive quietude and acceptance. Gone are the jagged edges of “Fire”,
and what’s left is a sense of peace amid the recognition that nothing has really changed and a
piano line that both hurts a heavy heart and uplifts it. “I know you feel like your dreams are a
waste”, Oberman sings, “and it only hurts more if you’re lucky enough/ to have had a taste”.
“Only some of the songs on this album are about romantic love”, they explained. “Part of being
an anti-capitalist in love means recognizing the beauty and value of different kinds of love. I
wrote this song about a brilliant friend of mine and was inspired by a line from a movie I saw
when I was a kid called Birdie. I’m sure I’m getting it wrong, but the way I remember it is ‘I know
what it’s like to be good at something no one wants’. That’s part of the violence of capitalism
too, all the art and small acts of creation that we’re all capable of getting swallowed up because
our culture only thinks something is valuable if it makes money. It’s so painful to be good at
something that no one wants. It really haunts me”.