Los Angeles-based Foxygen, the duo of Sam France and Jonathan Rado, return with their new album, Seeing Other People, due April 26 on Jagjaguwar. Additionally, they shared lead single, “Livin’ A Lie,” and an accompanying video.
Seeing Other People was written and produced entirely by Foxygen at Sonora Recorders in Los Feliz, California and engineered and mixed by Shawn Everett. Throughout, Foxygen’s keen ability to experiment with and expand upon classic pop and rock sounds bloom, and features legendary drummer Jim Keltner. Seeing Other People sees Foxygen at their best, “chopping up pop culture and spinning it into a sticky, wicked web.” The particular flavor on this album, the band suggests, is “Sad-Boy Plastic-Soul Adult-Contemporary Cartoon-Noir Music.”
Aptly named after the adult phrase “maybe we should see other people,” Seeing Other People is Foxygen’s most straightforward “goodbye” album yet; “Goodbye to the drugs, to the partying. Goodbye to my twenties now, Goodbye to my Saint Laurent-model-body. Goodbye to the touring circus — that’s right, no more shows or tours for a while. Goodbye, hopefully, to the anxiety attacks. Goodbye to beating myself up because I didn’t fit into those leather pants anymore. Fuck it. Goodbye to the facilities. And goodbye the leeches in my life,” says France. See the full-length letter here. The album is filled with self-referential tales of touring, partying, of being young and in a band, and saying farewell to the grittier, darker aspects of it all. “I remember a quote from Rado sticking with the press a few years ago about how we’d lived every rock n roll cliche in, about, one year. Well, here’s the album about it. Another movie. I don’t know what’s next. But here’s a snapshot of it all.”
Lead single, “Livin’ A Lie,” is an acknowledgement of fame-hungry mimicry as France sings “you’re name-dropping me all the time / You know I don’t really care for it / yeah you know that I don’t really care about it/ How does it feel to be livin a lie?” Its video, filmed in Calabasas and the band’s hometown, Westlake Village, in the wake of the Woolsey fires, and directed by Alessandra Lichtenfeld, depicts France alone, wandering around a near-empty house while Rado is among friends in a recording studio, before the house eventually collapses.
Seeing Other People is now available for pre-order. The Seeing Other People bundle will include limited edition 2xLP with an exclusive LP of demos both on pink vinyl, CD, and one of two t-shirts randomly allocated, featuring a portrait of one (but not both!) of Foxygen’s two founding members.
Pre-order Seeing Other People –
https://foxygen.ffm.to/seeingotherpeople
Seeing Other People Tracklisting:
1.Work
2. Mona
3. Seeing Other People
4. Face The Facts
5. Livin’ A Lie
6. The Thing Is
7. News
8. Flag At Half-Mast
9. The Conclusion
Photo Credit: Nicky Giraffe
