New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Mega Bog (the world-inhabiting moniker of song-animator Erin Birgy) will release her new album, Life, and Another, next Friday, July 23rd on Paradise of Bachelors (with a vinyl release on August 27th). Today, she releases a new single/video, "Maybe You Died," which follows previously released tracks "Station to Station," "Weight of the Earth, on Paper," and "Crumb Back." "Maybe You Died" is tender and howling, Birgy's voice sounding incantations over drifting guitar and piercing synth. The cinematic video, featuring a midnight scooter ride through Los Angeles and a sinister (though ambiguous) murder, was directed by Birgy using vintage VHS camcorder equipment. It features Birgy, Bog bandmate Zach Burba, and
Louise Chicoine, who also shot the video together.
"This song was an exercise in presence, looking around," explains Birgy. "What do I see and feel? What I see and feel are influenced by everything I've experienced up until that point, making that point irrelevant as an individual, meaning my present is less about time and external, but more about accepting my perspective, the narrative that got me here, images or situations, triggers that hold you from moving forward or rushing past without reckoning, and learning to care for pains that are part of you." Some images and aesthetics in the accompanying video have always been a part of "Erin's world"—in her words, "dark, leathered, supernatural, horny, evil." Birgy adds: "The many faces and intentions of a demonic time lapse, and the shock of what I'm capable of."
Life, and Another was written while Birgy cohabited with co-producer, engineer, and percussionist
James Krivchenia in a small cabin near the Rio Grande. There, Birgy found herself often alone between their separate touring schedules. These isolations opened a familiar black hole of troubling projections, and any desire to remain positive continued to fold back into self-destructive thought and fear. Over time, a budding interest in mindfulness, attachment theory, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and rage gave way to new productive brain processes. These creative juices followed Birgy on the road and into subsequent lonely bedrooms as the songs continued to flow.
Departing from the humid spider plant nursery of previous record Dolphine (2019), Life, and Another brings us back to our home planet, into the rarefied air pressure of a desert valley where its fourteen songs were written and scattered like stones in the landscape, each one a precious gem chiseled by Birgy. Life, and Another features instrumental contributions from longtime and new collaborators, including
Aaron Otheim, Zach Burba of iji, Will Segerstrom, Matt Bachmann, Andrew Dorset of Lake,
James Krivchenia of Big Thief, Meg
Duffy of Hand Habits, Jade Tcimpidis, Alex Liebman, and co-engineers Geoff Treager and Phil Hartunian. The album is another fantastical off-world transmission and Birgy's most sophisticated, exploratory, and accessible statement yet.
A limited-edition Life, and Another photo and song book, featuring images, songwriting and studio notes, collages and texts by Erin Birgy, and drawings by Zach Burba, designed by Joel Gregory, is available exclusively via Paradise of Bachelors.
