Caleb Cordes may be a few months late in releasing his new single as Sinai Vessel, but quite frankly, I think Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross kind of nailed it with their original score anyway. “Challenger” is the final single to be revealed ahead of I Sing (an album, rather than a motion picture soundtrack), which lands this Friday via Keeled Scales, and rather than struggling to separate the deeply entangled competitive personality traits of romantic and athletic opponents, the track finds Cordes sorting through a more broadly applicable issue within our modern era.
“This record is very much haunted by capitalism, and how survival under it touches everything—something that felt hammered into my head while living in Nashville, a city that felt like it was constantly being bulldozed and replaced overnight,” Cordes shares. “This song deals with how capitalism intersected with some relationship difficulties I was having at the time—it covers a lot of ground and turned out to be a really helpful way to reflect and parse them apart.”
Musically, the track lands somewhere between the dreamy heartland-indie of Wild Pink and the cool slacker sounds of Hovvdy or Horse Jumper of Love. “The chorus riff is probably six or seven years old,” adds Cordes. “I’d always struggled to find a place for it (or fit a vocal melody over it, which I solved by simply singing in unison with the guitar), but it became the skeleton key for this song’s development.”
Listen to the track below, and pre-order the LP here.
