![]() “We countrified it! We fried it in some Canola oil.” So we did ‘Let It Be’ in a major key, which gave it a totally different energy,” Heidecker says, acknowledging the absurdity of covering one of the most beloved and familiar rock songs of all time. “We were playing this game where we did Beatles songs divorced from their melodies. “Fear of Death” is rounded out by a studio rendition of “Let It Be,” which expands on the backstage version the pair recorded last year. By writing the melody, it still felt like me.” The things Tim was saying in that song definitely were things I felt but never would have said that way. “I sent Natalie and Drew the lyrics and said, if you want to take a crack at writing a tune for this, I’d be very humbled and honored.” Says Mering, “I can write melodies really fast, but I tend to labor over lyrics for a really long time. ![]() “This kind of Mexican cantina music was playing over the loudspeaker and I wrote a few verses to it,” Heidecker recalls. The pedal steel-flecked opener “Prelude to Feeling” sets the mood for those ruminations, as Heidecker and Mering croon, “Sit on back in your favorite chair/ You don’t have to be anywhere/ Put your headphones on, if you dare / You’re about to feel.” From there, the pair dabbles in peppy country rock (“Come Away With Me”), sad piano balladry (“Nothing”) and the Laurel Canyon-y closer “Oh How We Drift Away,” which finds Mering crafting music to lyrics Heidecker wrote on his phone while hiding from his kids on a family trip to a farm. Those days are coming to an end, and it’s sad.” My body wants to eat cupcakes and pizza and cheeseburgers. I’ve got a clock ticking that is my body and it will fail me at some point. ![]() “There’s dark stuff in the world, but there’s also my own mortality and the fact that I’m in middle age now. “I don’t go around thinking about dying all of the time, but that can be therapeutic to talk about or sing about,” Heidecker says. And maybe for me, it was good to break up my seriousness with levity and have fun with the music.” So making serious music with Tim actually didn’t feel that far off from what he normally does. “I tend to write really sad songs, but in theater there’s the happy mask and the sad mask, and they’re not mutually exclusive. “I take Tim & Eric very seriously and I think it transcends comedy and becomes art,” Mering says. He knows all these other amazing musicians.”ĭriven by their shared love of ‘70s singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon - “It would feel a little silly to incorporate trap beats into my work,” says Heidecker - the pair developed a quick and easy rapport in the studio, untethered to Heidecker’s more familiar comic sensibilities. “He just said, ‘I’ll get a studio and get Stella from Warpaint to play drums, and the Lemon Twigs are in town, and there’s a string section, and it’s all going to be cool.’ That would stress me out, personally, but he was able to pull it together.” Adds Mering, “Drew is a super-connector. ![]() This album is about high school - and, really, the way it helped shape everything else.“He made it seem easy,” Heidecker tells Variety. This album chronicles not only the adventures and misadventures of life as a Pennsylvania teen in the early ’90s, but also how it felt to lose a juvenile sense of mystery and possibility as an adult. Johnson and Mac DeMarco, High School sees Heidecker emerging as an increasingly playful and poignant story teller, infusing childhood tales with new gravity. High School is Tim’s new album with first single “Buddy.” Produced by Heidecker, Drew Erickson, Eric D. But, there’s one pivotal lodestar of human development he has yet to mine - that’s right, High School. The crushing devastation of divorce and the existential malaise of middle-age, the minutiae of home ownership and the ritual of family vacation, child rearing and global warming: Heidecker has handled it all with humor and heart. Since 2016, Tim Heidecker has chronicled the annals of adulthood on a series of supreme singer-songwriter albums. ![]()
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