Sylvan Esso not only make great dance music that you can occasionally hold people and/or cry to, they also have an artist-forward record label called Psychic Hotline. One of the cool things Psychic Hotline does is a newly started single series, the second installment of which was released today in the form of Bartees Strange, Eric Slick, and OHMME‘s take on TV on the Radio’s “Province,” along with Anjimile’s cover of Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s “Ever New.”
“Bartees and I started talking earlier this year,” Slick said of the collaboration. “We talked about our admiration for TV on the Radio. I was driving around one day and thought about how much I listened to Return to Cookie Mountain in 2006, and how it was a formative record for me. It’s such a strange and simultaneously straightforward album. I made a basic acoustic cover of their song ‘Province’ and from there Bartees added his vocal take. Then I reached out to OHMME, one of my favorite bands from Chicago. Sima and Macie added some ethereal swells and tied the whole song together. Then I removed all of the rough tracks and built a more modern structure underneath with Mellotron, Moog, and MPC. I’m so excited about the way it came out, and I am deeply inspired by what Bartees and OHMME brought to the table.”
“I’ll never forget when I found TVotR,” Strange added. “I saw their performance on Letterman while channel surfing. I jumped out of my bed. They gave me somebody to look up to. I don’t think I really knew what I wanted to do musically until I saw them. That was a big deal for me.”
Hear the track, along with Anjimile’s BGC cover, below.
