Next Friday, Katie Alice Greer will release her debut solo album Barbarism. We’ve already heard singles “Captivated,” “Dreamt I Talk To Horses,” and “FITS/My Love Can’t Be,” and now we’re getting one more from the former Priests performer: “Flag Wave Pt. 2.”
Here’s what Greer has to say about “Flag Wave Pt. 2”:
This is one of my favorites from the album because the drums were so fun to build around, and I was really satisfied with the way the contrasting sonic textures I found (the smooth cloudy synth pads, the crackle of the vocal distortion, the weirdly violent sound of the typewriter) created something new when smashed up against one another.
It’s barely intelligible, but there’s a looping sample of a distorted voice saying “But we don’t have a major enemy,” which is from a 1992 speech given by a US politician most reading this will know by name, on the floor of the House of Representatives. In the full quote he says, “We are spending $270 billion a year on the military, but we don’t have a major enemy. I know it hurts your feelings, I know you’re upset about it, I know you’re hoping and praying that maybe we’ll have another war, maybe somebody will rise up. But it ain’t happening!”
Part of the reason I’ve always been uncomfortable with my music being labeled political is that I don’t feel I’m typically writing explicitly about whatever politicized elements I’m referencing. I like to collage from the world around me, and everything has a political dimension. I know people who listen to my music are aware that I think about politics a lot. I also think about the psychological and emotional dimension of a lot of topical subject matter I write about. I am hoping, with songs like these, to explore and create a more ambiguous place that straddles the world as we live in it, and the world that exists for all of us internally in our hearts and minds.
Listen below.
Barbarism is out 6/24 on FourFour Records.
