Los Angeles-basedFoxygen, the duo ofSam FranceandJonathan Rado, return in 2019 with the new album,Seeing Other People. The nine-track collection was written and produced entirely byFoxygenat Sonora Recorders in Los Feliz, California and engineered and mixed byShawn Everett. Throughout, Foxygen'skeen ability to experiment with and expand upon classic pop and rock sounds bloom, and it also features contributions from legendary drummerJim Keltner.Seeing Other PeopleseesFoxygenat their very best, chopping up pop culture and spinning it into a sticky, wicked web. The particular flavor on this album, the band suggests, is Sad-Boy Plastic-Soul Adult-Contemporary Cartoon-Noir Music.
Aptly named after the adult phrase maybe we should see other people,Seeing Other PeopleisFoxygen'smost straightforward goodbye album yet; Goodbye to the drugs, to the partying. Goodbye to my twenties now, Goodbye to my Saint Laurent-model-body. Goodbye to the touring circus – that's right, no more shows or tours for a while. Goodbye, hopefully, to the anxiety attacks. Goodbye to beating myself up because I didn't fit into those leather pants anymore. Fuck it. Goodbye to the facilities. And goodbye the leeches in my life, says France.
The album is filled with self-referential tales of touring, partying, of being young and in a band, and saying farewell to the grittier, darker aspects of it all. I remember a quote from Rado sticking with the press a few years ago about how we'd lived every rock n roll cliche in, about, one year. Well, here's the album about it. Another movie. I don't know what's next. But here's a snapshot of it all. Lead single, Livin' A Lie, is an acknowledgement of fame-hungry mimicry as France sings you're name-dropping me all the time / You know I don't really care for it / yeah you know that I don't really care about it/ How does it feel to be livin a lie?