It’s an eventful day in the world of North Carolina indie duo Sylvan Esso, who have released their first single in three years, “WDID,” and pledged to remove their digital catalog from Spotify. The confrontational cut is the first to be released on their own label, Psychic Hotline.
“As we prepare to release new music, we have to decide what we want to be a part of and what we don’t,” Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn said in a statement. “To that end, with Sylvan Esso being on our own label for the first time, we have decided to remove our music from Spotify. While no solution is perfect, we simply can’t continue to put our life’s work in a store that, in addition to all its other glaring flaws, directly funds war machines.”
Sylvan Essso have been recording at their own Chapel Hill, N.C.-area studio with assistance from Jake Luppen. “WDID” will be backed by another new song, “KEEP ON,” when it is released as a 12-inch vinyl single on Jan. 9. The latter was “built from a week of improvisation” with bassist Daniel Aged and drummer TJ Maiani.
“She’s still kind of in zygote form,” Meath jokes with SPIN when asked how far along the new album is. “We’re doing a new thing where, instead of every other Sylvan Esso record where we’ve written 10 songs and those are the ones we’re recording, this time we’re writing a lot of them. We have about 30 or 40 ideas and we’re going to slowly work our way into finding 10 of them that we want to be on the record, which is so fun.”
Quizzed on the sound of the fresh material, Meath says, “we’ve been really delving into late ’90s breakbeat music. Lots of Boards of Canada, Beck’s Odelay and Madonna’s Ray of Light. A huge influence for me is Soul Coughing, who are wizards of sampling. We’re essentially creating those samples for ourselves and sampling ourselves on our own record.”
Meath has also dipped her toe into acting in the Taylor McFadden-directed Lovers, which premiered last year at the Denver International Film Festival.
