Bartees Strange has announced his third full-length album, Horror, to be released on 14 February 2025. His most ambitious and wide-ranging project to date is the follow-up to 2022’s Farm To Table.
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.
New single ‘Sober’ has also been released, produced by Strange, Jack Antonoff, Yves Rothman and Jack Antonoff, Lawrence Rothman. Strange says, “This song is about falling short in a relationship, over and over and drinking because of it. I think this is something a lot of people can probably relate to. Being in love, but not being the best at showing it or feeling successful within it. And being afraid that this is something you’ll just always deal with because you never really saw a better example of how love works.” The single is paired with a music video directed by Ricardo Betancourt that draws inspiration from Sly & The Family Stone’s 1974 Soul Train performance. Horror also features the recently released explosive single ‘Lie 95’.
Strange says of Horror – “In a way I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives too. For me it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck, or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close – so I’m less afraid.”
Strange began Horror at his 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, Strange worked on some material for Antonoff’s band Bleachers, and Antonoff worked 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, Teddy Pendergrass, and Neil Young – merged with Strange’s interest in hip-hop, country, indie rock, and house.
In the time since Farm to Table, Strange toured alongside boygenius, Clairo, Dijon and The National.
Born in Ipswich, England to a military father and opera-singer mother, Bartees Strange had a peripatetic childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Oklahoma. Later, Bartees cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in Washington D.C. and Brooklyn whilst working in the Barack Obama administration and the environmental justice movement. Recently, his music has been featured on multiple popular TV and film soundtracks including Apple TV’s The New Look and A24’s I Saw The TV Glow. He will also appear on the upcoming Red Hot compilation, Transa, covering TV On The Radio’s ‘Wolf Like Me’ with Kara Jackson and labelmate Anjimile.
Released on 14 February 2025, Horror will be available digitally, on CD, standard black vinyl, transparent vinyl (indie retail and artist store only) and red vinyl (Dinked exclusive edition) which will include a bonus 7” of new songs ‘Like This’ and ‘Pigs Fly’. For pre-order information head here.
BARTEES STRANGE – Horror 4AD 0746 14 February 2025
Formats: Digital, CD, Standard Black LP, Transparent LP (Artist Store & Indie Retail), Red LP (Dinked)
Tracklist:
- Too Much
- Hit It Quit It
- Sober
- Baltimore
- Lie 95
- Wants, Needs
- Lovers
- Doomsday Buttercup
- 17
- Looped Defenders
- Norf Gun
- Backseat Banton
BARTEES STRANGE ONLINE
Instagram @bartees_strange
