Last month, Young Jesus announced their latest LP, Shepherd Head (out September 16th on Saddle Creek). The album was announced with the single “Ocean“, which features Young Jesus labelmate Tomberlin and created an immediate stir. Today, the Chicago-born but now Los Angeles-based project led by the founding member, John Rossiter, is sharing a second single from the LP, a track called “Rose Eater”. The track comes accompanied by a video that takes a characteristically unorthodox approach to presenting the song, inter-weaving a solo live performance from Rossiter with the album version of the song, which Rossiter says reflects the exploratory approach he took to making the record. 

“I wrote Rose Eater on the piano and tried to record it. I used the internal mic on my computer because at the time I had lent my microphone to Emerald House, a beautiful DIY space and small community in LA,” Rossiter explains. “The recording of the piano sounded horrible. So I pitched it down and ran it through a million effects until it sounded like Enya or Peter Gabriel strings. The lyrics are in line with that ethos. Trying very hard to be the ‘ideal’ of something or someone, and finding the truth of oneself is very different and is perhaps discovered in the process. The video is very much in conversation with that evolving process, the unfinished work of a life, and the fun that lives right next to ‘serious’ art and life. 

“I think it fits with the way I made the album, which was allowing in sounds of the environment, not going for a perfectly quiet room while recording. Allowing mediums and ways of capturing a video of music into a format that traditionally has a very specific way of communicating. Trying to be creative rather than fulfill an assignment. Unconventional but hopefully it’s got a spirit all its own!”