We’re barely two years removed from Lucas Nathan’s latest art-pop experiment as Jerry Paper, Free Time, in which the artist harnessed the newfound sense of freedom achieved by leaning into a non-binary gender identity while additionally stripping away the walls of genre that may have influenced their previous material. It appears as if Paper is still chasing that high—today they’re announcing Free Time’s follow-up, INBETWEEZER, which continues to chase that sense of freedom. “So much of this record is my getting lost in my own curiosity,” Paper shares, “playing around and surprising myself.”
The surprise begins for the listener with the album’s first single “Scenic Route,” which begins as a sultry, downcast ballad before serrated guitar and psychedelic synths battle it out behind Paper’s composed vocals. “It’s a raw one, one of those aspirational songs where I’m telling myself something that I understand conceptually before I truly believe it,” Paper shares of the track which, like the rest of the LP, was recorded by Sami Perez. “All caught up in some bullshit, lost in the abyss, and trying to get myself to slow down and be in my sensory world in the present. I feel like we really captured that lost feeling, particularly in that section after the second chorus where I’m singing, ‘Sometimes I feel so lost,’ and Sami went virtuoso-style on the delay; at that moment it feels like the song truly gets lost in itself. I have been thinking lately about that lost feeling, and how the only way out of it for me is to get lost in my own curiosity.”
Check out the new track below, and pre-order INBETWEEZER ahead of its September 27 release via Stones Throw here.
