Idiot Glee grows up and channels Nilsson, Cale and Orbison on new track "Evergreen Psycho"

13 November 2015, 14:09 | Written by Paul Bridgewater

(Tracks)

(Idiot Glee)

James Friley's Idiot Glee project returns today with the announcement of Stephen (Hedwig & The Angry Inch) Trask collaboration. A new record is due in January with Trask on production duties and "Evergreen Psycho" is an astoundingly beautiful teaser of what we can expect.

"The song is a story about two ‘people’ falling in love," Friley explains, "although deceptively, one of them simply wants something from the other one...but it’s portrayed literally as a Cactus and an Evergreen tree falling in love, the Evergreen secretly just wanting to drink the water within the cactus...and murders it to do so."

The song bulges with melancholic darkness and fin-de-siecle brooding - but it's that of the late sixties, of Orbison, Hazelwood, Wilson, Cale and Nilsson, with Friley's voice finding depths of expression in line with his influences and a production that feels more fitting than anything we've heard from Idiot Glee before. "Affecting" is an understatement - this is heart-stoppingly brilliant.

Friley's upcoming record, recorded with the composer of Hedwig & The Angry Inch in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, was mostly written while dating his now-wife and artist Holli Schulz.