Track Reviews // Foxygen - Work


16th April 2019
From upcoming album ‘Seeing Other People’ (Jagjaguwar, 26th April)

There’s an oddly gen-x nostalgia at work in the third cut from Foxygen’s upcoming album 'Seeing Other People'. The song begins with a kind of canned 'Cecilia', machines whirring into being and then cycling through an early MTV-era soundboard of claps and false starts.

It might have something to do with Sam France’s memoir drawing to a conclusion in step with the release of this fifth studio album. An open letter to fans claims that Seeing Other People “is the adult way of saying ‘let’s end shit’” and that Rado and France are done with the rock and roll cliché. If ‘Work’ is anything to go by they’re saying farewell by reliving rock and roll through the eyes of your dad on cocaine.

After the stomping clunk of the first phrases, and with a collective sigh of relief from the baroque and glam sections of Foxygen’s fan base, boisterous piano comes in as if Billy Joel himself was on the stool. France’s vocal, as with many Foxygen records, obliterates any questions over their latest stylistic experiment. He’s sardonic, pouty and self-referential; evocative of his performance on Hang’s eat-your-heart-out-Jagger opener Follow The Leader, biting off “If I’m such a fucking jerk then why don’t you write it all down”.

The three songs released so far are certainly plainer than their more whimsical or operatic experimentations. But the techno-industrial bang of Jonathan Rado’s production and spit-in-your-eye cocky satire of Sam France promises another manic, visceral release from Foxygen coming down the line.

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