St. Lucia Announces New LP ‘Utopia’ And Shares “Touch” Single/Video || North American Tour Begins Oct. 7th

Led by husband-and-wife duo South Africa-born, Jean-Philip Grobler and Germany-born Patti Beranek, synth-pop aficionados St. Lucia arrives with their new single “Touch” alongside its 80s film-esque music video directed by Nicole Lipp. Now, four years after releasing 2018’s LP Hyperion, the band returns with their long-awaited fourth studio album. Utopia will be released on October 7th via Nettwerk.

St. Lucia have also shared additional dates and details for their ‘Utopia Tour 2022’ this fall. The Dutch musician and YouTube star Blanks and synth-rocker Caroline Kingsbury will support on select dates. Additionally, having sold out their first show at Brooklyn Steel on November 15th, the band has announced a second show on November 16th, on-sale to the public this Wednesday 7/20 at 10am EST. Renowned for their energetic live shows, this six-week tour is St. Lucia’s first full headline run in four years. See below for the full set of dates, more info and tickets at stlucianewyork.com/live.

Utopia’s lead single “Touch”glides out of the gate on buoyant keys and a head-nodding bass line as the refrain reaches for ecstatic yacht rock. As if sticking his head out of the window of a DeLorean, Jean-Philip croons in a glorious high register, “Oh, I need your touch.” The track is complemented with mirthful, 80s pop culture-ingrained visuals featuring LGBTQ+ dancer/actor Liv Mai along with Canyon Carballosa, an inspiring advocate for both the LGBTQ+ and autistic communities.

“To me, ‘Touch’ feels like all my favorite yacht rock tracks distilled to their essence and sent through the St. Lucia filter,” says Jean-Philip Grobler. “I’ve always felt that a song like this would suit us because we’re so associated with sunshine, it just took a few years to arrive. Thematically, the song is about how even when you’ve broken up with someone you were in a relationship with, you can still desire them, which is a strange but very human predicament to be in. It also speaks to our deep need for human contact after we were so deprived of it for the last few years. So go ahead, tell someone you need their touch.”

WATCH + SHARE “Touch”

On the music video, Jean-Philip Grobler shares this: “The video for ‘Touch’ was directed by Nicole Lipp, who is our video collaborator for the second half of our new LP ‘Utopia.’ It centers around a main character (Liv Mai) who gets back after a long night with their ex, who they seem to have re-connected with after a love hiatus due to some wrongdoing on the part of their ex. As we see, the ex (now seemingly having transcended the ‘ex’ moniker) has written a note of apology and as the video progresses the reason for the joy of our main character becomes clear: they both experienced a night of pure unadulterated dancing abandonment with pulsating and moving lights (human or machine operated? We may never know). And thus, our main characters need for the ‘touch’ of their ex is satisfied. But was it a fleeting moment or will it last? Only time will tell.”

Equal parts colorful disco, 70s funk, and 80s pop, the Utopia LP is a luminous palette of synths, pulsating with vibrant sonics that has come to characterize their genre-defying career. Inspired by everyone from David Bowie, The Weeknd, Daft Punk, and Parcels, St. Lucia enlisted the mixing talents of trusted collaborator Chris Zane [Passion Pit, The Walkmen] to help steer the sonically sparkling ship to greater heights.

On the group’s forthcoming LP, Jean-Philip expresses, “We at St. Lucia HQ are beyond excited (giddy, in fact) to reveal the next stage of our new musical era: ‘Utopia,’ the full album. Yes, yes, it’s true that we have been stringing you along a little bit, but in our opinion there’s nothing wrong with a little tease, and it might in fact lead to a more satisfying conclusion. ‘Utopia I’ makes up the first half on the album, like a side A, and our upcoming new release, ‘Utopia II,’ makes up the second half of the album, like a side B (remember from the heady days of vinyl?). The journey continues our search for the meaning of ‘Utopia’ through all the joy, sadness, and irony of our modern existence. Is ‘Utopia’ in the extremes, or is it in the tug-of-war between the extremes? Join us over the next few months for more clarity.”

“Touch” is available on DSPs here: https://stlucia.ffm.to/touch

Tour Dates:
10/7 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club *
10/8 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts*  
10/9 – New Haven, CT @ College Street Music Hall *  
10/11 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Café & Music Hall *
10/13 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club ^
10/14 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall ^
10/15 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall ^
10/16 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues ^
10/18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater ^
10/19 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman ^
10/21 – Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre ^
10/24 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox ^
10/25 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom ^
10/26 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre ^
10/28 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades ^
10/29 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall ^
10/30 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre ^
11/1 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
11/2 – San Diego, CA @ Belly Up
11/4 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
11/5 – Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf
11/7 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s
11/8 – Dallas, TX @ The Studio at The Factory
11/9 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
11/11 – Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre
11/12 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
11/13 – Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre
11/15 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel (SOLD OUT)
11/16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel (JUST ADDED)

* with Caroline Kingsbury
^ with Blanks

About St. Lucia:

Led by South Africa-born Jean-Philip Grobler and Germany-born Patti Beranek, St. Lucia has stayed faithful to what they’re best at: putting on incredible live shows everywhere from Coachella to Kansas City, producing shimmery synth-driven pop grooves, and having a good time doing what they love. St. Lucia has always stirred good vibes. It started with their debut album, When The Night, which entered the Billboard Top 200 and hit #6 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Album chart. The follow-up album, Matter, yielded the hit “Dancing On Glass,” while the band collaborated with Jack Antonoff, RAC and others. Two years later, Hyperion represented a creative and critical high watermark with praise from Billboard, who hailed the album as “buoyant,” and PopMatters who raved, “it feels revelatory.”

Throughout 2020, they wrote and recorded what would become Utopia in Patti’s hometown of Konstanz, Germany and Upstate New York. Following the birth of their youngest son Charlie, Jean-Philip’s self-imposed social media exile, and a return to “normalcy” in the world at large, they shared six tracks as Utopia I in April 2022. “Rocket On My Feet” eclipsed 1 million total streams as the project earned critical praise from Riff Magazine, Under The Radar, and more. Variance hailed it as “a wealth of electropop goodness in the middle of a world on fire.”

In its entirety, the forthcoming LP only expands this vision, hinging on the parity at the heart of the band’s signature style. Synths pulsate like strobe lights as euphoria rains down from a skyscraping singalong. The guitar strings shake and shudder akin to bodies on the dance floor bathed in fluorescence. Freedom courses through every physical and emotional movement as you depart this dimension only to land on St. Lucia’s Utopia. The group’s fourth full-length album unlocks this plane via eloquent and elegant electro-pop projected in cinematic proportions like your favorite fantasy fever dream on the big screen. As the unadulterated and unfiltered vision of Jean-Philip Grobler and Patti Beranek, these 13 tracks engage escape in its purest form.