Oxbow‘s new single “Dead Ahead” has made its way online alongside a music video directed by Chris Purdie. That song is the opening track to the band’s forthcoming new album “Love’s Holiday“, due out July 21st on Ipecac Recordings.
Guitarist/pianist Niko Wenner commented:
“‘Dead Ahead‘ was made to order for starting our new album, Love’s Holiday. It is one of the few songs without choral singing and the only in D Minor, my co-producer in crime Joe Chiccarelli calling for fast and abrasive, it was birthed playing for my kids on an acoustic guitar given to me at age 6 and handmade before 1957 in Umeå, Sweden by Göran Frii.
The recording features both the tiny toy tine piano Dan [Adams] gave our children and my 1981 white Stratocaster, the chorus adds a Little Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal I bought in 1979 from Tom Stevenson, my friend from age 4, recently deceased, who taught me to play AC/DC, Judas Priest and Van Halen songs. RIP and rock on, Tommy.”
Vocalist Eugene Robinson commented of the accompanying visuals for the track:
“This may be the only video wherein we appear just as actors/characters and while the gaming scene recalls nothing if not Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal,’ the lyric is pure OXBOW: ‘This god of love destroys and creates’…indubitably.”
Purdie added
“The concept for the mirrors used in ‘Dead Ahead’ were inspired by Orson Welles noir, ‘The Lady From Shanghai,’ a film partly based in and around San Francisco. The idea of mirrors and reflection were used to evoke themes of duality, and the idea that there are multiple perspectives, or that things aren’t entirely as they seem.”
In other news, the band have rolled out the dates for a U.S. tour this fall, those stops include:
10/20 Philadelphia, PA – PhilaMOCA
10/21 Portland, ME – SPACE
10/22 Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere
11/09 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
11/10 Los Angeles, CA – Regent Theatre
11/11 Mesa, AZ – Pub Rock
The group also have the following European/UK tour booked:
09/01 Glasgow, UK – Broadcast
09/02 Birmingham, UK – Supersonic Festival
09/03 Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
09/04 Bristol, UK – Exchange
09/05 London, UK – Studio 9294
09/06 Kortrijk, BEL – Wilde Westen
09/07 Brussels, BEL – Botanique
09/08 Nijmegen, NET – Merleyn
09/09 Tetange, LUX – Human’s World Festival (free entry)
09/10 Bochum, GER – Die Trompete
09/11 Vienna, AUT – Volkstheatre Rote Bar
09/12 Wroclaw, POL – Liverpool
09/13 Warsaw, POL – Hydrozagadka
09/14 Berlin, GER – Roadrunners Paradise
09/15 Hamburg, GER – Hafenklang
09/16 Aalborg, DEN – Lasher Fest
