Quietly, without much fanfare, Oklahoma has developed a sound. Local heroes The Flaming Lips set the template with their mid-period resurgence, of course, but in the wake of The Soft Bulletin have come a swath of Sooners for whom indie-rock is a windswept Jackson Pollock canvas dotted with throwaway samples, barbed twang, and sandblasted melody. Evangelicals came and spooked us, and BRONCHO have made their name by melting the Lips formula under a magnifying glass, and now OKC’s Horse Thief are stretching the thing back out again, delivering bedroom indie rock that feels as wide as the prairies.
On January 27, they’ll release Trials and Truths, the followup to 2014’s Fear in Bliss, but you don’t have to wait till the days of the Trump administration to get a taste; you can check out our premiere of the video for album single “Another Youth” today. The song, frontman Cameron Neal says, was “written from the point of realizing you’re losing your youth. You can’t be eighteen—or eight—again, when you had no worries in the world, [but] you can hold on to those feelings and still be an adult.” Sounds about right.
Check out “Another Youth” below.
Trials and Truth is out January 27 via Bella Union.
