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Today, songwriter/producer Tatum Gale shares “New Look, Same Great Flavor,” the second single off his forthcoming debut album, Pretty Green.
Brazen hyperpop maximalism shimmers on “New Look, Same Great Flavor.” An iridescent critique of the music industry, it’s a playful approach to indietronica bolstered by pitch-shifted vox, window-shaking drums, and syrupy synths. Far more than a protest anthem, the track embraces our fixation on the “next big thing” by becoming it, nodding to predecessors (SOPHIE, Charli XCX) in the process.
Speaking on the track, Tatum wrote: “This is as hyperpop as the album gets. It’s a super bright, punchy, distorted dance time. It is a collage of some of the gaudy, empty images we’ve seen going out on the town in the pre- and post-pandemic era.”
The songs on Pretty Green began as reactions: against self-destruction, against the musical landscape young artists create in, against the callous indifference of the world at large, and in some ways, against the self.
Yet it’s from this reductive headspace that Pretty Green assumed its vibrant dance-pop shape, taking form as an uncompromising, synth-driven response to life’s myriad cruelties that finds joy in the fact there are still things worth fighting for. The album is a glass-half-full assessment of Gale’s desire to care for those closest to him, even as that desire clashes with his personal shortcomings, both as an individual and as an artist.
“Pretty Green as a title is meant as an expression of hope that the Earth can, in fact, be saved, and that you must carve out your own ways to support yourself and those you love,” Gale says. “But it’s also an acknowledgment of the artist’s relative helplessness—especially when you’re just starting out.”
In line with Green’s introspective qualities, Gale gave himself the space necessary to examine and reflect on both himself and his music, a process that began in an appropriately contemplative setting. Armed with just a defective Casio and the human voice, he began writing Green’s tracks during the summer of 2020 in the guest bedroom of his partner and collaborator Laura Jinn’s childhood Cincinnati home.
From there, the work continued in Brooklyn, gradually metamorphizing from feverish, forthright demos into a maximalist lifework of indie synth—and similarly moving beyond its baseline Cincinnati Casio into warm Rhodes tones (recorded in NYC), as well as recordings of Gale’s performance on the piano in his childhood home in Portland, Maine.
Graced by collaborators like Laura Jinn (“Poison Darty”) and building around the basslines of Wyatt Shapiro (“This is starting to feel good again”), as well as the drums of Jackson Price (“Your Day,” “Chickadee Eye,” “800m”) and the barn-burning sax of Dexter Moorse (“800m”), Green runs the gambit of electronic subgenera, incorporating found sounds, big beats, and satisfactory grooves in a coherent yet versatile package.
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