Bartees Strange Announces Debut Album, ‘Live Forever,’ Shares ‘Boomer’
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.”