Foxing are about to level up with their ambitious new album
Nearer My God. Co-produced by former Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla and the band’s own Eric Hudson, the album officially arrives next month, and we’ve already heard one song, “Slapstick.” Today, they’ve shared another new song — or maybe five new songs? You see, “Nearer My God,” named after the hymn that supposedly played as the Titanic sank and was featured in CNN’s “TURNER DOOMSDAY VIDEO,” was translated and recorded in five different languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, French, and German.

“The language idea started as a ‘wouldn’t it be cool’ thing that just kept going,” frontman Conor Murphy explains in a press release. “The whole point was to put in a fraction of the effort that most international artists put in. The goal was to show respect and appreciation. Each step was pretty difficult because we wanted to get it as right as possible and my only knowledge outside of English is some high school French. Each of the four foreign languages had its own set of difficulties but, after working with 70ish translators and friends for a few months, we’ve got one song in five tongues.”

Despite being the album’s title track, the song was almost cut from the record entirely. “I went to the mat for ‘Nearer My God,'” Chris Walla told us in a recent interview. “It wasn’t in throwaway territory, but it was on the chopping block, and it didn’t feel like anybody was gonna fight for it. The melody was so strong, and the way the song opened up felt so good to me. I kept zeroing in on it as something that had a lot of emotional weight and felt really relatable to me.” Listen to all five versions of “Nearer My God” below.

Nearer My God is out 8/10 on Triple Crown. Pre-order it here.