Kevin Bronson on February 8th, 2019

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Like the old Young Gunz song says: Can’t stop, won’t stop.

With his 16th album as the Black Watch still shiny and new, songwriter John Andrew Fredrick returns on Valentine’s Day with a one-off single that finds him less the wry indie-rocker and more the passionate popster. “Julie,” the follow-up to last year’s album “Witches!,” also marks another departure for the Black Watch: It’s the rare time Fredrick has given up the microphone.

Dreamy both sonically and literally, “Julie” (made with collaborator Andy Creighton of the world Record) features the vocals of Julie Schulte, a freelance writer making her musical debut in a ’60s-chanteuse, Claudine Longet kind of way. Leave it to Fredrick, an author and English professor in addition to his musical exploits, to live out an “eldritch” dream (and work it into the lyrics), but that’s what happened here.

The song, he explains, “has a bit of a rich twist, which you’ll soon see, and is to my mind the most beautiful thing I’ve written.

“Every once in a while I have these dreams or visions or intimations or prescient moments, an ‘eldritch voice,’ as the song says, that comes and goes,” he adds. “‘Julie’ is about one of those. A person I envisioned I would meet who, well, came true. I wrote this song for her, about her; then, having discovered she had a really ace voice, Andy and I decided to have her sing it.”

For a companion piece, there’s a beautiful song about a “Dreams Come True Girl,” too.

||| Stream: “Julie”

||| Previously: The Quixotic Adventures of John Andrew Fredrick, “Georgette, Georgette,” “Way Strange World”