Alex Cameron is set to release his sophomore album, Forced Witness, on September 8th via Secretly Canadian / Rhythmethod. Having already shared the “devastating and danceable single” (NPR Music), “Candy May,“ today the artist presents “Stranger’s Kiss,” an affecting duet with Angel Olsen that contains as much raw humanity as it does a savvy grasp of the impossible loneliness of the times. Directed by Jemima Kirke, the video stars Kirke alongside Cameron as a pair of destitute nobodies clinging to the relief of a stranger’s affection on the streets and subways of New York City.
Bearing witness to the baroque clusterf*ckery of the world is no longer voluntary. We are all forced to watch. Every possible catastrophe vibrates in our pockets, demanding to be witnessed. Alex Cameron’s solution to the difficulties we face is a danceable and dangerous earnestness, a sense of honesty that heals and relieves even as it cleaves us or makes us laugh in self-defense. He’s offering us vivid portraits of misfits who look at the world without illusion.
Forced Witness was recorded in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas and produced by Cameron along with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, with driving rhythms and rousing melodies embellished at every turn by Roy Molloy’s warm hornwork. If there is darkness in these songs, it is not because taboos can titillate but because Cameron knows that confession has a redeeming power and that people are often at their most startlingly beautiful when their skies have fallen. These songs are alive with the rich detail of life lived and the radical distinctiveness of the stories they tell feel universal. In these chaotic times when we aren’t able to look away, Cameron is offering us a pure account of the world as he’s seen it.
Watch “Candy May” Video –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU01Rix_l2w
Pre-order Forced Witness —
https://alexcameron.lnk.to/forcedwitness
