Nation of Language have reached near Jai Paul levels of hype over the past half decade by reducing their output to a single track released per year since their 2015 debut EP. It was exciting news, then, that the Brooklyn trio finally announced a proper debut back in February with the synth-heavy “Rush & Fever,” which joined previously shared singles “On Division St” and “Indignities” on Introduction, Presence’s track list.
Today they’re sharing another synthy single—“The Wall & I” is yet another capsule of melancholy and excitement, channeling a cathartic energy into a well-spaced five minutes. “The hardest parts of the creative process for me are those moments when things don’t flow naturally at all,” shares vocalist Ian Devaney, “and you just have to sit and slug it out with your own brain—all the while knowing that you might spend hours mining your memories and working through feelings only to end up with nothing useable on the other side.”
He continues, “In the time since writing ‘The Wall & I’ (itself a product of many such fruitless hours), I have tried to make a mental adjustment to see the struggle itself as a kind of conceptual/performative dance—to make the conscious choice to spend a whole day locked in battle with my own aspirations wrestling against actual outcomes. As good as it feels to just sit down and knock a song out, there is a different level of satisfaction when you feel like you’ve bled a little bit and truly earned it.”
Introduction, Presence is out May 22—you can pre-order it here.
