With the Petty-aissance seemingly in full swing, now feels like the perfect time for the return of Buffalo Tom—a nominally adjacent trio reconfiguring the late songwriter’s power-pop sensibilities for the ’90s alt-rock era. After releasing their first song since their 2018 album Quiet and Peace at the top of the year, today we’re getting the second single from their forthcoming album Jump Rope, with “New Girl Singing” matching the pop-rock flavoring of Full Moon Flavor.
Yet as far as influences for the tune go, vocalist Chris Colbourn shares that the band leaned into more than just music. “‘New Girl Singing’ takes inspiration from photography, literature, and films we grew up with,” he shares before listing specific names and titles. “Elena Ferrante, Janet Frame, Anne Sexton, Anna Magnani, Emma Bovary, Mark Cohen, Somerset Maugham’s The Razor's Edge, and Hüsker Dü’s ‘Books About UFOs.’ Our heroine escapes her bedroom to sing her own song and start a new girl state.”
Arriving with the track is a video that sees the band bringing in an additional influence: Agnès Varda’s 1985 bleak road movie Vagabond. “I walked around Cambridge for months looking for the right character—not a tragic figure sleeping in the rough, but a girl starting out on her own with an unapologetic independence,” Colbourn notes of casting Lexie Lieberthal in the clip as a stand-in for Varda’s actress Sandrine Bonnaire. “‘We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road,’” he adds, quoting the French New Wave director. “‘In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed.’”
Check out the new video below, and pre-save “New Girl Singing” here. Jump Rope is out May 31.
