I love these dudes. Foxygen‘s Jonathan Rado and Sam France are two of the most interesting songwriting cats I’ve heard in the last few years. Jagjaguwar released their self-produced masterpiece Take the Kids Off Broadway earlier this year and now they’re set to release their new Richard Swift-produced album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, in January.
Check out Foxygen’s story to catch up: “In May 2011, Foxygen’s Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade mini-opus Take the Kids Off Broadway to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club.
The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift’s outsider-pop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock n’ roll (at least a dozen records were finished before they graduated high school).
Foxygen left the venue that night unsure whether Swift would truly listen or sling the disc into a dumpster on his way out. You’re reading this right now because he did listen. In fact, Swift fucking flipped for Foxygen’s bugged out, esoteric majesty and called upon them immediately to say as much.”
“Eight months later, Foxygen holed up for a week-long recording session at Swift’s neo-legendary National Freedom studio, creating We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine. Foxygen believes each song was a message of peace delivered from cosmic beings who used France and Rado as their messenger vessels.”
So now take a listen to the new first jam from that upcoming album and join the ranks of Foxygen devotees. Or at least join me.
