THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bartees Strange was raised on fear. His family told him scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.
Horror began at Strange’s home studio with an eye toward production. A session with Yves and Lawrence Rothman (Yves Tumor, Lady Gaga) provided a rhythmic and sonic backbone for chunks of the record. After Strange met Jack Antonoff and the pair became fast friends, Antonoff began work on Horror. The twosome finished the record together, working the songs raw, editing, arranging, and dressing them up in clothing bound to inspire fear. Throughout the record, Strange lays down one difficult truth after another, all over a sonic pastiche of music that soundtracked his childhood. Across the album’s 12 new tracks are genre-bending threads of the music his dad introduced him to — Parliament-Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac and Teddy Pendergrass — merged with Strange’s interest in hip-hop, country, indie rock and house.
Fittingly, Strange share the first single from Horror on Halloween. Too Much is a sonic and lyrical love letter from Strange to himself, growing from a deflated ego into a feral giant. As the LP’s opening salvo, Too Much sets the tone for the Baltimore-based genre-shifter’s third outing with nods to early hits by the Isleys and Brothers Johnson. The track comes alongside a video directed by Caity Arthur, filmed at a haunted house in Baltimore.
“This is the sonic thesis of the album,” Strange says. “I feel like if you like this you’ll love everything else. This record is about things that scare me. And this song is about that feeling of being overwhelmed by life. This song is about those feelings. Too much to hold, Heaven to touch.”
The second single Wants Needs is an uproarious confessional that finds Strange’s stylistic range and aptitude for genre-melting pop music at its sharpest. What begins as a pitch-perfect indie-rock earworm gradually crescendos into a full force anthem, anchored by disarming self-assuredness. “I realised a couple years ago that if music is really going to work out long-term, I want/need more fans. Of course, it’s a timing and numbers game — but race is a powerful component too. I don’t see a lot of people like me in the indie space making long-term livings on their records. I worry people may have a hard time connecting to me because I don’t look/sound like them. That I’m fun to root for, but not actually supported. This song is about how much that worries me — fully understanding that a lot of these neurosis are of my own making.”
Born in Ipswich, England to a military father and opera-singer mother, Strange had a peripatetic childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Oklahoma. He cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in D.C. and Brooklyn while working in the Obama administration and the environmental justice movement. Since releasing his 2022 sophomore album Farm to Table, Strange has toured alongside boygenius, Clairo, Dijon and The National. Recently, his music has been featured on multiple TV and film soundtracks.”
