Our first Album Of The Week of 2021 was Better Way, the solo debut from Casper Clausen of Danish bands Efterklang and Liima. The endlessly prolific Clausen is not about to let that be his last release of the year, though. A new Efterklang album called Windflowers is coming in October, the follow-up to 2019’s Altid Sammen.

Lead single “Living Other Lives” is a deeply pretty song with a soft, warm glow about it, grounded by a crisp programmed beat. Here’s what Clausen has to say about it:

Living other lives started out as a jam in my Lisbon studio during Spring 2020 lockdown. I was playing around with my 404 sampler and I found that kind of groove that makes my head bop — put some samples on it, and I could listen to it forever — a good sign. So I was just having that on loop while scrolling through my instagram feed. The lyrics sort of came out of that moment; living other lives, imagination jumping from one life/image to another, revisiting, updating myself, absolutely bodiless, while scrolling up and up with my thumb. It’s a fascinating world we’re living in, so strangely symbiotic and aware of what everybody’s doing, I feel I’m living multiple lives all at once. Watching all these people expressing and changing themselves far away, out there around the planet.

Director Søren Lynggaard Andersen made the “Living Other Lives” video with an old Russian 16mm camera during the making of Windflowers on the Danish island of Møn. Watch it below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Alien Arms”
02 “Beautiful Eclipse”
03 “Hold Me Close When You Can”
04 “Lady Of The Rocks”
05 “Dragonfly”
06 “Living Other Lives”
07 “Mindless Center”
08 “House On A Feather”
09 “Åbent Sår” (Feat. The Field)

Windflowers is out 10/8 on City Slang. Efterklang are playing a livestreamed ticketed concert on 6/27 from the first edition of their Sommertræf (Danish for Summer Meet-Up); they’re teasing that they’ll debut new material at the show.