We are very honoured to bring you a first taste of the new single from Austin, Texas band The Western Civilization ahead of their first album in eight years.
‘Fool’ is a deliciously cool drink of water – dappling guitars and pattering drums carry dual female/male vocals from Rachel Hansbro and Reggie O’ Farrel over a sweet melody that has a visceral edge to it, imbued with a melancholy air and a brittleness replete with a scaling, uplifting chorus.
Hansbro says of the track:
‘Fool’ is about divorce. It’s hard for everyone involved. It was written for a friend. I was friends with both the husband and wife and could see the toll that it was taking on both of them. I think I wrote about 8 pages worth of lyrics for this song, and really felt for the child that was sort of stuck in the middle. It was disheartening to see them so stuck in making life difficult for one another and not seeing what it was doing to the child. I think that plays out a bit in the way we made vocal digs at one another and then in the center of the song having a little bit of orchestrated peace and tranquility. I think we went through 3 or 4 iterations of this song. We’d work on it for a while and then get frustrated and shelve it again. It almost never saw the light of day and then it ended up being a single. Funny how that works out sometimes.
Funny story… Reggie almost broke our old drummer, Anthony while we were initially trying to demo it with the band. He wanted this weird kind of jagged non-linear thing in the verses but couldn’t quite articulate it exactly. Anthony did probably 50 takes and every time Reggie was just like… “nope”, haha. In a fit of frustration Anthony finally just played the most ridiculous thing he could think of and Reggie was like… “Yes! That’s it!!”. Anthony wanted to strangle him. Those drum parts on the verses ended up being some of our favorite parts on the whole record though!
The result is something that ebbs and flows over five immersive minutes, burning like a slow fuse that sparks and fades. The quiet reflective tone mirrors the sadness of the themes and creates something quite statuesque and elegiac:
‘Fool’ is available from 21 July 2023 and will be available on all the usual download and streaming sites. It comes off the band’s new album ‘Fractions of A Whole’ due out on 15 September 2023.
Feature Photograph: Jack Potts
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