S.Lo on July 3rd, 2018

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Imagine the ’90s sci-fi film “I Come in Peace” but starring Ben Folds instead of Dolph Lundgren with an advance of waltzing acoustic guitars replacing semi-automatic rifles (and pianos) and modular synths spurting and bubbling underneath to fight off a war machine with weapons of chord progressions, poetic riffs, thoughtful self-doubt and resistant passivity. Therein you’ll have the latest song, “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” from L.A.-based folk-pop duo yOya (Alex Pfender and Noah Dietterich), now a trio (with new drummer Ian Meltzer), from their upcoming sophomore album, “The Half Turn.” 

Produced by Pfender at Tiny House, engineered by Greg Cortez at New Monkey Studio and mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering, the song is layered in both meaning and arrangement. Pfender says the song is “about a certain kind of fight that you can feel coming a long ways off but can’t seem to outrun… But the song cries out for peace, hands up in surrender. Aggression, resentment, and isolation mix and boil over in a pang of self-doubt, born of a simple desire to keep the peace.” The carnage of war just isn’t worth it in this case, as Pfender and Dietterich build up to a full-on anti-assault in the chorus, “Lay me across your open hands / I’m just another notion you might never understand / Makin a fist that you crush everything you’re holdin / I didn’t have to fold / I wanna say I tried / Well, did I? / I don’t wanna fight / Couldn’t do it even if I’m right.”  “The Half Turn” will be released (harmonies blazing) July 20 via New Professor.

||| Stream: “I Don’t Wanna Fight”

||| Previously: “The Bloom,” “The Heartwood” (video), “The Heartwood” (stream), “Fools Gold” (video), “Fools Gold” (stream), “King of Nothing,” “I’ll Be the Fire,” “Come Alive,” “Ears Wide Open”