Bartees Strange, featured on Rolling Stone‘s Bandcamp Friday roundups, has announced his debut album, Live Forever. The LP will be out on October 2nd via Memory Music.
Strange also shared a Britain Weyant-directed video for a new single, “Boomer,” featuring the artist playing all the song’s instruments through some split-screen editing. Strange goes back-and-forth between a rap cadence on the song’s verses to full-throated singing on the chorus, reminiscent of Killers-style heartland indie rock.
Live Forever, mastered by Will Yip, follows Strange’s Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy EP — in which he covered five songs by the National — and includes the previously released single “Mustang.” Strange, though based in Washington, D.C., recorded the album in upstate New York, and based much of its lyrics on his experiences as a black man growing up and playing in bands in Mustang, Oklahoma.
“I’m often the only black guy in the room when I’m playing in a band or working in a studio, and I’ll be honest, I don’t think the engineer always knew what I wanted to capture, what I was trying to do, or what I was referencing,” Strange explains. “I wanted a space where I could be in control of how it was gonna sound and have people there to check me that I trust.”