Conner Youngblood is a bit of an enigma among the indie-folk scene, materializing as he does every six years or so to present an endearingly off-the-beaten-path vision of where the movement is at. Right on schedule, the Nashville-based artist is following up last November’s vibes-on-loop single “All They Want Is Violence” with news of his successor to 2018’s Cheyenne LP with Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly set to arrive September 6 via Missing Piece Records. Self-recorded and self-produced in his home, the LP is by the term’s very definition a bedroom-pop epic showcasing the artist’s unexpectedly emotional lyrical themes (sung in Spanish, Japanese, and Danish, in addition to his native English) and even more unexpected instrumental accompaniment.
Today’s news also arrives with the record’s second single following “Violence,” with “Blue Gatorade” taking the form of an equally entrancing yet more soulful and spacious recording as Youngblood’s yearning, almost Grandaddy-esque vocals weave through seven minutes of dreary composition. Lyrically, the track pulls from the most unlikely of sources: tennis. “I was watching the French Open and trying to formulate a song around this riff and line ‘Heaven knows who will love me,’” he shares. “I’m sitting there watching Sofia [Kenin] during a break between sets, just sweating it out, drinking some kind of sports drink. I proceed to somehow connect the ideas of overexertion in the pursuit of love/sports, sweat, sweat getting in your eyes, clouded vision, and, finally, this moment of solitude and reflection while drinking a sports drink in between sets (metaphorically speaking—but in Sofia’s case, quite literally). I don’t think she was actually drinking blue Gatorade, I think it was red, and in an officially sponsored Evian bottle. But I don’t like the red flavor.”
Paired with the track is a visual which takes us on a tour of all the .mp4 files saved on Youngblood’s laptop—including footage for the “All They Want Is Violence” video and a clip he recorded while editing the “Blue Gatorade” video and playing with various filters. “It got pretty wild when I decided to record myself while editing the video on the train after leaving my sister’s apartment, and over the course of a few weeks it just took on a life of its own. Still, even in all the visual chaos, I hoped to capture a rhythm and tell a story that accommodated/brought out the quiet intensity of the song.”
Check it out below.
