You motherfuckers better get ready for the next Ratboys album. I don't even know if they've recorded it yet, but I know it's going to rule. Last year, the band came through Charlottesville and played a bunch of new songs, and I can't wait to hear those new songs again. Shout out Ratboys frontwoman Julia Steiner. I met her after the show, and she was unbelievably cool. I wish I could tell you something else about the next Ratboys album, but I can't. I can, however, tell you that the UK singer-songwriter Keaton Henson's new song is a Julia Steiner duet.
Keaton Henson is a reclusive type who almost never records live but who has a solid resume of collaborations. In the past we've posted his songs with Ryan Hemsworth, Mitski, and UNKLE. Last year, Henson released the instrumental LP Somnambulant Cycles. Today, he drops "Lazy Magician," a soft-spoken indie rock jam that he co-wrote with Julia Steiner. In a press release, Henson says that Steiner's voice reminds him of lots of the music that he grew up loving:
Julia’s voice is so evocative of that sound to me; it reminds me of when I first heard Rilo Kiley. She has a lot of the suburban magic-realism of the American bands I loved back then.
I wrote the guitar parts and first lines to the drum machine, and we both sort of just free-wrote the rest. Allowing our subconscious to form the narrative. I like that it’s almost like these two lonely souls singing next to each other, but sometimes over each other, like we’re so lost in our own self-reflection we’re unaware we’re in a duet.
Check it out below.
"Lazy Magician" is out now on Play It Again Sam.
