Stream: Will Fox, ‘I’m Always Getting in My Way’
Kevin Bronson on
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Will Fox poignantly showed listeners his way on his 2019 album “Which Way” — ’70s-styled folk music with contemporary flourishes narrated in a tender croon somewhere between Elliott Smith and Alex Chilton. While casting a wary but empathetic eye at his own inner conflicts, the so-called “citizen of the world,” who once tired of L.A. so much that he moved back to Virginia to work in a gristmill, turned his emotional terrain into common ground.
Now Fox has announced that the follow-up, “Old News,” would be out May 20 via Twosyllable Records.
The news of his sophomore album was preceded in January by the release of the one-off single “Isolation Blues,” possibly the bazillionth song written in light of the pandemic but a special one nonetheless. Blues it ain’t; buoyant bossa nova it is. (As a lad, he lived for a time in Brazil.)
The song was penned during the first few weeks of the lockdown in 2020, when “I had just lost both of my restaurant jobs, and I was a few weeks away from my 30th birthday,” Fox says. “I had also just broken up with my girlfriend at the time and we had a strict ‘zero communication’ policy, so I was extra lonely because of that, and all I wanted to do was check in and make sure she and her family were okay. As much as I had been affected … I was well aware that people around the world were literally losing their loved ones to this thing, like out of a sci-fi film. It was tragic. So this song is a tribute to all of the people who had it worse than I did.”
Last week brought the arrival of two new singles, “I’m Always Getting in My Way” — which has all the markings of an instant classic — and “Berry on a Briar.” The former, with its turns of phrase, surging guitars and memorable chorus, will resonate with anyone prone to self-flagellation.
Says Fox: “Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, this is a take on that inner monologue, laced with some humor given that I’m repeating the same line over and over, and sometimes just by acknowledging this fault, you can learn to overcome it, change it or simply accept it.”
||| Stream: “I’m Always Getting in My Way”
||| Also: Stream “Berry on a Briar” and “Isolation Blues”
||| Live: Will Fox performs a free show tonight at Zebulon along with Benny Lipson and Mimi Raver. He also plays May 12 at the Goldfish.
||| Previously: 2019 interview, “Which Way,” “Bygones”
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