Composer/musician Danny Elfman has shared “Insects” today – it’s a reworked version of an Oingo Boingo song, which is the final track to come out prior to the release of his new double album Big Mess (ANTI-), out on June 11.

“In the beginning of 2020 I was preparing a live show for Coachella. I’d been looking for old Boingo songs that connected to the dystopian nightmare I found myself immersed in at that moment in time living in America,” Elfman explains. “As I played around with different songs it occurred to me that ‘Insects’ made sense. Who were the ‘Insects,’ the bloodsuckers of today? It was obvious to me – they all hived together in Washington and seemed to thrive on sucking the rational sense of reality out of our brains.”

The songs on Big Mess combine both harmonically complex arrangements and simple high energy driving music with biting, acerbic wit as they reckon with the chaos and confusion of the modern world. “2020 was an intense year, to say the very least,” Elfman says. And while the anger, frustration, and isolation of it all is palpable in his delivery, ‘Big Mess’ is about more than simply blowing off steam. In making the space to truly sit with his emotions and write without limitations, Elfman achieved a kind of artistic liberation on the record that had been eluding him for decades, rediscovering his voice and reinventing himself all at once in the process.