Toronto-based musician Peter Sagar returned back in March with his sixth album under the HOMESHAKE moniker, and, rather than spending his summer touring the new project, he’s already in the process of rolling out its successor. While spring’s CD Wallet was a ruminative and (as the title suggests) fairly nostalgic waltz through slowcore and slacker-rock sounds, the forthcoming Horsie is a forward-looking work of spaced-out hypnagogic pop taking the project full-circle to its mid-’10s origins (his debut LP In the Shower turns 10 in October).
In being a considerably more surreal-sounding record than its predecessor, Horsie’s early singles have arrived with conceptual music videos which together form a triptych narrative abstractly expressing the otherworldly experience that is touring. Following “Nothing 2 See” and “Simple,” that trilogy concludes today with a Man Who Fell to Earth–type visual for the record’s hazy third single, “Empty Lot,” wherein Sagar—after being chased by former Makeout Videotape bandmate Mac DeMarco—wakes up in his car, now an Avatar shade of blue. “The transformation is complete, and I can leave now,” Sagar cryptically summarizes regarding the narrative’s conclusion, which feels much more upbeat than that of Nic Roeg’s film.
“It was a trip to go from shooting the doc-style sentimental CD Wallet videos in cold-ass Canada to spacing out at Marilyn Monroe’s old house in the desert in the span of a couple months,” the video’s director Jim Larson shares, noting that this was his seventh collaboration with the artist. “The idea of the trilogy we came up with was for each video to represent the three main stages of touring and insert these themes that Pete said his album was about. ‘Empty Lot’ is about finally coming home to your loved one, transformed into a blue alien guy, filled with relief of making it through another tour.”
For further context, Sagar adds: “Paris, Texas is my favorite movie, Star Trek: The Next Generation is my favorite TV show, and ‘Windowlicker’ is my favorite music video.”
There you have it! Check out the video below, and find details on the newly announced release day eve listening party and music screening event at LA’s Brain Dead Studio here. For the rest of us, the album will be out June 28 via Sagar’s own SHHOAMKEE label.
