ALBUM FEATURES: Weyes Blood, Jonathan Rado of Foxygen & The Lemon Twigs
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Praise for the title track:
“a brisk rocker that sounds like it was plucked straight out of Seventies Southern California. Despite its rollicking sound, the song’s lyrics — as the title suggests — are a bit more morbid, as Heidecker parses the point of living when the end is always nigh, but ultimately settles firmly on the side of life”
- Rolling Stone
"a rollicking, riff-heavy stomper with rich backing vocals from Mering that meditates on the end of one’s partying days.”
- AV Club
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Get ready, because you’re about to feel. That’s what Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood warn on Fear of Death’s opening track, “Prelude to Feelings.” And they mean it. This is a Serious Album about Serious Topics – a doomed future, abandoning life in the city, and, you guessed it, the inevitability of death – and without a warning, those feelings might just sneak up on you.
“I didn’t know that Fear of Death was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it,” Heidecker says. "It took a minute for me to stand back and look at what I was talking about to realize that, yes, I am now a middle-aged man and my subconscious is screaming at me: 'You are getting old, dude! You are not going to live forever! Put down that cheeseburger!’"
Fear of Death is the follow-up to 2019’s What the Brokenhearted Do…, which chronicles a fictional divorce from his wife and the accompanying depression. Just like that one with its morose theme of a contentious breakup, the new album puts Heidecker squarely in the tradition of comedians and actors like Steve Martin, Hugh Laurie, and Donald Glover, eschewing his funny side in his music and leaving the jokes for the screen. With Weyes Blood joining Heidecker for vocal duties on every song, even becoming the principal on the track “Oh How We Drift Away,” we’re left with no doubt about the intention of the album.
We first saw a glimpse of Heidecker and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering performing together in the summer of 2019 when a video of the pair singing “Let it Be” backstage at a charity event went viral. From there, they enlisted Weyes Blood bandmate Drew Erickson (Jonathan Wilson, Dawes) to co-produce Fear of Death. Heidecker explains: “Drew was the perfect co-conspirator: he knew all the right people to come play with us, and he had impeccable musical chops and taste! And Natalie, I believe, is a generational singer/songwriter, a major talent who glided into this project with so much grace and a good attitude. I think she could harmonize with a doorstop and make it sound dreamy."
Alongside Heidecker and Weyes Blood, the all-star band includes The Lemon Twigs’ Brian & Michael D’Addario, frequent collaborator Jonathan Rado, and string arrangements by Spacebomb’s Trey Pollard (Foxygen, Bedouine, The Waterboys, Natalie Prass). The resulting album is Heidecker’s biggest sounding and fleshed out album yet, featuring winding guitar, slow-building percussion, gentle keys, and a 14-piece string ensemble.
The album’s lead single, “Fear of Death,” is “about as ‘Dead’ as I get,” says Heidecker. Over an intricate guitar line, Heidecker’s voice intertwines with Mering’s elevative vocals as he swears off partying and risky decisions: “I don’t see the value in having fun // I think I’m done growing // fear of death is keeping me alive.” And while “Fear of Death” is an upbeat take on avoiding potentially fatal choices and avoiding death, “Nothing” comes to terms with it. “Nothing, that’s what it amounts to, they say // A black void waiting down the road for us one day,” Heidecker and Mering sing in a recording session that Heidecker calls “one of the more spiritual and emotional moments of my creative life.”
While this is serious music about serious topics, it’s not all doom and gloom, Heidecker says. "I hope my observations and meditations on death, the afterlife, the future, while at times a little dark and grim, offer a little comfort and catharsis for some people, as I don’t think I’m the only one who occasionally thinks about this stuff."
It takes a singular energy, talent, and humility to gather such an all star-cast of collaborators around a body of music, and Heidecker showcases all three in the making of Fear of Death. "This record is a dream come true for me,” he says. "I got to work with some of the best, and nicest, musicians in town who helped me take some shabby, simple tunes and turn them into something I’m really proud of." Occasionally, an idea with the shabbiest, simplest beginnings will grow into something more special than ever intended. With Fear of Death, Heidecker, Weyes Blood, and their band of friends have achieved just that.