We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink on just how terrible of a year 2020 has been for pretty much everyone. But truth be told, it’s been a remarkable year, so far, for new music. Up next on our release radar is No Horizon, the forthcoming EP from Wye Oak. It hits July 31 via Merge, and today (July 20), the Baltimore-born, Durham-based duo deliver another sterling track off the EP in “No Place.”
The delicate, ethereal track, much like the entire EP, was written for, and features contributions from, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The collaboration adds a new dynamic to Wye Oak’s sound, and at play here are thoughts and themes around the human body, and just where we’re headed as we become less reliant on it.
“This song is about the separation between our consciousness and our physical bodies, and how it feels to forget that you even have a body in the first place,” says Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner. “Of course, it gets easier and easier to use your body less and less; as we innovate more efficient ways of achieving our temporal goals, we are making them somewhat obsolete. Personally, I’m very pro-body, even as I spent the first half of my life hating and fighting against mine and all of its perceived imperfections. But it’s hard to look around and not at least imagine that we might be some of the last humans on earth to ever enjoy what having a body actually feels like, on a planet that isn’t yet completely inhospitable to us. And that seems like something worth noticing.”
Connect your full body to your mind and ears below.