New York Duo Low Tide Release New Album ‘Bread & Roses’

Listen to the full LP below

October 23, 2026October 24, 2026 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2026, Bread and Roses, Courtney Robbins, Eli Oberman, Low Tide, New York

Courtney Robbins and Eli Oberman are Low Tide. (Image: Marquis Facey)

New York trans-nonbinary folk-pop duo Low Tide have a great new album that came out today they named Bread & Roses.

According to vocalist/violinist Eli Oberman, the album’s title stems from a women’s labor song that dates back to 1911 and a composition Eli always cited as 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.

“I was inspired by the original song ‘Bread and Roses’ and its full-throated assertion that love, beauty, and art are just as much human needs as bread, and that they’re connected and worth fighting for,” Oberman tells Rock & Roll Globe. “I think we’re in a moment where a lot of people are waking up to the ways capitalism is cruel and unsustainable, and the sense that maybe this is a time when we can do something about it. I wanted to explore some of the ways it was impacting my own life, and I hope other people can take some solace in it.”

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. “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.”

Low Tide *Bread & Roses*, self-released 2026

The tension between deep love and deep rage, between exhaustion and exaltation, exists at the root of Bread & Roses, as Oberman and guitarist Courtney Robbins explore the full spectrum of the word love.

“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.”

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.”

Listen to the entirety of Bread & Roses below.