KUTX at Home: Tim Heidecker
Host: Taylor Wallace; Producer: Deidre Gott; Songs: \"Come Away With Me\" \"Fear of Death\" \"Property\" Album: Fear of Death
When my husband told me the new Tim Heidecker (Tim and Eric, Office Hours) album had been released and that it heavily featured the artist Weyes Blood (“ways-blood” he called her), my immediate thought was, “that’s interesting. What’s that story?” Had it been Phoebe Bridgers, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Heidecker and Natalie Mering (who uses the Weyes Blood moniker) are deeply talented musicians, but I still couldn’t stop wondering, “who put these two in the same room?”
The answer is Drew Erickson, an LA-based producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist who played keys on Weyes Blood’s 2019 album Titanic Rising. Heidecker tells us the full story in the interview, so I won’t spoil it here, but it essentially comes down to connected session musicians in LA know how to hustle and wrangle. In this case, that included the D’Addario brothers of the Lemon Twigs and Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa. After just a few days in the studio, Fear of Death was born. True to Heidecker’s sound blending 70’s rock, singer-songwriter and jam band elements, Mering’s harmonies add a transcendent texture that fills-out a space you might have never known existed.
The lyrics of Fear of Death, in broad strokes, wrestle with the consequences of middle age, but like any broad-scoped introspection, some things deviate slightly to better understand the whole.The song “Little Lamb,” for instance, is a metaphor for being an artist trying to move onto new endeavors completely separate from what they originally got famous for doing, but being told by their fans to basically stay in their lane. This is certainly an album that necessitates a careful ear. –Taylor Wallace, KUTX Morning Host
Tim Heidecker
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