Virginia’s Natalie Prass aimed to make an indie record that sounded like a lush, big budget pop blockbuster, a goal best realised on mini masterpiece single ‘Short Court Style’, its handclaps and taut production an indication of the musician’s technical wizardry and full-hearted songwriting.
In a new video for “The Fire,” directed by Alex Germanotta, Natalie Prass, dressed in pink hues, dances through the crumbling ruins, a colorful contrast to the presidential faces once held in esteem. Tight shots reveal the wear and tear of the faces of men revered, now weathered by the elements.
“This video is a statement on power and power dynamics between people in relationships and in society,” Prass says. “In the end, I gain power, but then I take it away from myself.”
After scrapping the follow-up to her 2015 self-titled debut, Prass wrestled with the results of the 2016 presidential election. The outcome, The Future and The Past, is a reflective — but not heavy-handed — meditation on what happened. “The Fire” captures a feeling of uncertainty, drawing strength in its soaring chorus.
“We felt like we were in a post apocalyptic world,” Prass says of the video’s setting. “I really enjoyed being so pink and so feminine around these massive, masculine busts. It was difficult sometimes, I didn’t really like being on Jackson’s shoulder, but it was empowering being up there and feeling bigger than him for the moment.”
The Future and The Past is out now via ATO Records.
Natalie Prass’The Future And The Past show at the Rescue Rooms recently was the concert we needed in 2018. On the record, Prass combats political polarization, a bleak national mood and whatever else is bringing you down with R&B-infused beats, delirious love songs and pure, danceable joy. She brings the same strategy to her live show, a positive-vibes-only, smiley hoopla. Backed by a troupe of dude musicians (including her fiance and Dr. Dogdrummer Eric Slick), Prass is the lone front woman. Her band mates wear blue jumpsuits. Prass delivered a party as opposed to a set, treating her tiny but enthused audience to all The Future And The Past’s dance hits as well as standouts from her self-titled first album, like “Bird of Prey” and “Your Fool.” As the show neared its end, elation, or maybe exhaustion, consumed the band ,
Natalie Prass performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded September 24th, 2018.
Songs: Never Too Late Ship Go Down Lost Short Court Style
The album was written, the tour scheduled, the pieces all in place. It had been almost two years since Natalie Prass’ self-titled debut garnered rave reviews for its luscious, baroque-pop sounds. At the end of 2016, the singer-songwriter’s sophomore follow-up was almost ready to be released. Then the election happened.
“I had a record ready to go,” Prass says. “And I scrapped it.”
What followed was a trying time for the Richmond, Virginia, native, full of soul-searching, dark thoughts, and a protracted fight with her (now former) record label. But Prass was insistent. “I can’t release a neutral record right now,” she says. “I need to contribute to the conversation.” Her determination and focused songwriting has finally led her to her new album, The Future and the Past.
It’s been three-and-a-half years since Prass’ debut, and her newest effort has her returning in fighting form. She once again worked with producer Matthew E. White and the Spacebomb House Band, who are quietly earning a reputation as one of the best house bands around. Prass’ gorgeous orchestral strings are back, but with a smaller role this time around. Instead, she’s rummaged through the thrift shops of music history, dusting off artifacts of funk and soul, Brazilian tropicalia, indie folk, and bedazzled LA rock. The result is eclectic, fun, and thoroughly groovy — a polished statement of raw feeling.
“Oh My”: At the time I was writing these songs in 2016 and 2017, right after the election, I was pretty raw and feeling so many emotions. The news was just pounding down on all of us. It was a lot to handle and feeling like my life was changing and the country was changing and the world was changing really quickly.
So, I would go to my little rehearsal space — I shared this shitty rehearsal space with metal dudes for a while. I would go there in the morning time when there were no metal people playing and lie on the floor and cry. Read, write, play piano for a little bit, and cry. I felt like it was my responsibility to try and put some positive energy into the world and talk about things that were very real. The only thing that was hard about it was convincing the label I was with at the time that it was a good idea, because they were not into it at all.
“Short Court Style”: So, “Short Court” was already gonna be on the other record. For that one, I already wrote the music for a short film called Oh Jerome, No that was written by Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky. They asked me to write the music for it, and I wrote maybe five or six tunes for that little short film. That was the opening track, the montage, without lyrics or anything. Then when the short film came out, people were hitting me up like, “Where do I get that song? I need that song.” So, I was thinking, “Oh, I should just write lyrics to this and make it an actual song I can put on my record.” Usually, the melody and chords come to me pretty effortlessly, and then I start building from there. Usually, when I co-write, I have people who help me fill in lyrics and help me put my thoughts together. Usually, the chords and the melody are what I feel most confident about.
“Interlude: Your Fire”: It’s funny, I didn’t intend for that to be split up. Everybody was like, “”The Fire” should be a single, but we need to split up that intro and make it a separate track,” and I was like, “No!” But I get it. It was intended to be all one piece, but it’s kind of cool; a lot of my favorite records have interludes, so I was like, “Ok, ok, I’ll split it up.”
“The Fire”: I wrote a version of that song in Nashville with my buddy Mikky Ekko. We wrote that a long time ago, and then I couldn’t remember how it went. That song was on an old laptop that died. I’m really bad with technology, so when a computer dies I’m like, “Well, that’s it.” But that one…I went from memory, and kind of re-wrote the whole thing. I thought it was a good story of feeling in-between, of knowing you need to get out of something but feeling stuck at the same time. The whole…the future and the past… stuck in-between, very much in the present – knowing what has happened and what led you here – But what’s going to happen in the future?
“Hot for the Mountain”: That one is a protest song, a political song for staying focused. You might feel like you’re the only one, but you’re not. “Hot for the Mountain”, like, it’s not gonna be an easy way, but just stay positive. It’s kind of like, “You’re not alone.” I feel really numb to a lot of stuff now. I’m just trying to focus on the big picture, doing what I know I can do, making sure I always vote — that is so important to me now. It’s like, “Oh, I’ll do it on the big election.” But now it’s like, “No, I am always going to stay up on it” and be involved in my local elections, especially. I knew it was important before, but now it’s a very high priority.
“Lost”: That one goes with the Me Too movement. I really didn’t want that song to be on the record. I didn’t want to give the person it’s about any kind of ammo against me. The Me Too movement has been really hard on me, personally, because it’s really painful to remember things that have happened to you — but I’m so grateful for it at the same time. Now there’s all this language, there’s all this support, when you just felt like you were so alone … People were like, “You just have to deal with it and move on.” Which, yeah, you have to move on. You can’t live your life in pain like that. It’s nice to know there’s brave women out there and they’re telling their stories. I’m a pretty private person, but I think it’s important to have solidarity with people who have had experiences like myself.
“Sisters”:
Matt’s the producer. He’s been my buddy for a very long time and is like a big brother to me, and he lives a 10-minute walk from my apartment. I went to his house almost every day during those couple months and spent a lot of time sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee. He had this drum machine, and he had this beat he made on his drum machine, and I was like, “Oh, that’s what I’m feeling right now. Let’s write to this beat.” It was a heavy-hitting kind of beat, and I wanted it to be kind of like a fight song for how I was feeling. I was feeling extremely hopeless at the time, feeling that people don’t want to listen to women, people don’t want women leaders, women cut each other down, men cut women down, there are so many deep stereotypes, and women are pitted against one another. Basically that entire song is A Minor. I was listening to a lot of gospel music when the election happened. I wanted to put some of that feeling into the new music I was writing.
“Never Too Late”: The label I was with before I parted ways with them — after this record (laughs) — they were like, “How would you feel about going to LA and writing with some people?” I was like, “Sure, I’ll try it.” And that was the worst month of my life. These people… All right, they’re just trying to get by, like me, and they have to hustle way more than I do because I live in a very cheap city, and they live in LA. Of course, they want to write music that could potentially make money. But that’s not where my interests are. I was miserable. It made me feel like the one thing I know how to do very well I don’t know how to do. People were treating me like I didn’t know how to write music. We couldn’t agree on anything.
My publisher, who I’ve been working with since I was 23 years old, was like, “Hey, Nat, there’s this guy out there, Steve Lindsey, this old LA scene kind of guy. I feel like you might like him.” He’s this old LA session dude. Used to play with Toto back in the day. He knew exactly where I was coming from. It was this bright light in the middle of all the terrible. I was having fun, relaxing, like, yeah, “Let’s write this glitzy, shiny, Steely Dan kind of song.” Of course, I don’t relate to the people my age or the people younger than me. I relate to the people 70 and up. That’s so me. We wrote that song super fast. I had the melody already. For the chorus, either, “It’s too late,” or “It’s never too late.” They helped me tighten up the loose ends. But I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to do already.
“Ship Go Down”: I really love psychedelic tropicalia music. Tropicalia music was a huge political movement, and I was taking inspiration from how they expressed their political views. Brazilian music has the most beautiful melodies, harmonies, and it’s groovy: it takes from jazz, pop, R&B, and american blues. The lyrics are really meaningful and thought-provoking and poetic, talking about politics in Brazil at the time.
No place is perfect, and I always thought America had a ton of problems. But I at least felt like we were moving in the right direction. I thought, “There’s no way people are going to vote for this…” I was so naive. I knew it was going to be close. Then the shock. Going out in Richmond — and Richmond is very progressive — but going out, thinking, “Who did they vote for? Who did they vote for?” Feeling like I don’t know where I live anymore. That’s definitely the darkest song on the record.
“Nothing to Say”: I’ve had that one for a long time, and I’ve always wanted to record that one, and I thought the time is right now. There’s so many talking heads. That one was funny when we were recording it in the studio, because Matt was all, “I don’t know what to do with this song,” and I was like, “I got it, I got it, I got it! We’re going to record this marble bouncing off the floor, and then we’re going to have this bell sound!” And then Matt just basically cleaned up the huge mess I made.
“Far from You”: That one’s written about Karen Carpenter. I’ve always loved her; I’ve always thought she was this beautiful soul. She’s very misunderstood, and people often only think about her in terms of how she died [from complications due to anorexia]. But there’s so much more than that. She was from a time when women didn’t play drums; women were up front and singing. She didn’t have a choice. Her label and everybody pushed her out from the kit. Once she got pushed out front, the body shaming started. It got to her head. She started to feel like she didn’t have any control over her career and what she was doing musically. The one thing she could control was her diet. Always in a competition with her family, who favored her brother. You can hear how kind she is and how much she just loves singing and gets a joy out of music. I wanted to write a tribute to her.
“Ain’t Nobody”: That was straight up trying to bring joy into a harsh reality. You have to keep moving and stay energized. We weren’t intending it, originally, to be such an upbeat tune. We were thinking it would be a little more subdued, almost more of a piano, mid-tempo groove sort of thing. But once we got in the studio, I was like, “This isn’t what I need right now. We gotta pick this up.” It took a long time for us to figure out where that one was supposed to sit, but it got there. That’s what’s so fun about creating and putting a production together. If you have a pretty solid song you can mold it to be whatever you want it to be. I wanted to end on a high note.
The Future And The Past is bursting with a myriad of grooves and Natalie’s vocals float on top, light as a feather and tough as nails. Short Court Style dials the tempo into 90s R&B territory – punctuated by handclaps, sampled “woos,” and a Dr. Dre-esque whistling synth line. Lyrically she wields a sharp knife as well. The love tornLost begins with: “Turn up the fader, its like a lightning bolt / we can’t be saved, so now I’m listening on my own / Once there was a time when you had me hypnotized / you realized that your finger prints were on my bones.” Funky feminist anthem Sisters is an empowering rallying cry: “I want to say it loud / for all the ones held down / we gotta change the plan.”
In the two tracks already previewed from her upcoming second album The Future and The Past, Natalie Prass has shown us her frivolous side on the sprightly ‘Short Court Style’ and her emphatic, political side on the anthemic ‘Sisters’. Today she delivers a third single, ‘Lost’, and it’s the most heart-rending and delicate song to be aired yet, and will certainly appeal to fans of her debut album.
Although it is similar to the songs from Natalie Prass,‘Lost’ shows growth in many ways for Prass. For starters it’s the first of her songs that she’s produced on her own, and you can hear how she’s crafted and commanded her band to swell and resound so phenomenally well with herself at the centre. And Prass, as that central figure, is magnificent; her voice has never sounded so honeyed, as it is in the tripping and contemplative verses, nor has it sounded as rich as it does in the swelling undercurrent of emotion that comes pouring out in the chorus.
Taking a deep breath and releasing my new song “Lost” today. I was afraid to record this one, I fought it hard (and it almost didn’t make it) because it was written during a time that I needed to completely put behind me. But I wrapped my head around a new understanding of it’s lyrics…it’s empowering. It’s about putting your foot down when enough is enough. Most of the time it’s easier said than done. Thanks for listening. Natalie Prass
A laid-back disco cool and bouncing bassline groove don’t make Natalie Prass‘ recent single “Short Court Style” seem like a natural candidate for quiet reflection — perhaps, instead, a hard-earned frolic betwixt lovers who work hard to make their love work. But then Prass shows up to her South X Lullaby session with keyboardist Jacob Ungerleider, slows down the tempo just a mood lighting dimmer and turns the song’s breezy funk into the soft murmurs of late-night devotion.
This version of “Short Court Style” was filmed in an interactive art installation by Caitlin Pickall called FEAST, which is part of the SXSW Art Programandwas created as part of the Laboratory Artist Residency program in Spokane, Wash. Prass and Ungerlieder sit at a dinner table set with plates and towers of wine glasses, onto which images and patterns are projected. The projections are triggered by the movements of guests at the table, so the experience changes every time someone sits down.
After the election, the Richmond artist Natalie Prass threw out the introspective album she’d been working on and started over. What she made next was music for everyone. Prass’s forthcoming sophomore album The Future and The Past play through the car stereo. Completed only a few weeks ago, the record blasts at peak volume, straining the small vehicle’s inadequate speaker system. Listening there is a very evident shift in who Prass is about to become.
“I hear a lot of frustration,” says Prass “But also a lot of courage.”
When Prass introduced herself to mass audiences (and was met with substantial critical acclaim) in 2015 on her self-titled debut, the album was a work invested in the emotions of personal heartache. Utilizing warm brass instrumentation and lilting string arrangements—all complementarily flourishing around Prass’s songcraft and airily affected vocals—the collection of songs felt simultaneously delicate and vibrant.
The songs on The Future and The Past do away with such nimble intimacy, revelling instead in a newfound boldness and authority. While Prass’s voice remains deceptively unassuming, the words behind it are now far less concerned with matters of the heart than with matters of life, and where Prass fits in what has become an increasingly uncertain socio-political landscape. Accompanied by a well of deep, danceable grooves that make heavy reference to the late ’70s and early ’80s funk Prass has made an album that imbues protest with celebration.
“I feel like it’s an, ‘OK, we have to keep going,’ kind of record,” she explains. “‘We’re going to get through this. Let’s dance. Let’s clap. Let’s all sing. Let’s just keep going. We’re living. Life is hard but it’s also really rewarding.’ I didn’t want it to be just about me. It felt like there was just too much going on for me to write a super personal this-is-my-experience-and-I’m-going-to-be-really-vague-about-it-so-you-can-maybe-relate kind of thing. No. I wanted to make good pop songs out of subjects that are a little harder to write about, or that people are scared to write about. I feel like a lot of people are writing political songs, but trying to make it into music that you would actually want to dance to and sing back is another challenge.”
Natalie Prass admits that The Future and The Pastwasn’t always intended to be so conscientiously charged. When she first started writing new songs last year, “It was basically turning into another heartbreak record.” Then, right before she was scheduled to begin recording in November, the results of the presidential election came in, hitting her in a way she wasn’t expecting. Though she doesn’t go into great specifics, she says, “The election brought back all of these ghosts from my past that I’ve just kind of pushed away. All of a sudden they started bubbling to the surface again. I started reevaluating things that I’ve experienced as a musician and as a woman—just thinking that it was normal—and realizing, ‘Oh, wait a second. That’s not normal.’ It all came crashing down on me at once.”
In one fell swoop, Prass decided to scrap her intended album. Keeping only a few holdover demos, she started over. “I was like, ‘I’m not releasing that record,’” she says. “There was no way. I needed to write more. So I wrote every day from January to early March. I wanted to give myself a chance to say something about everything. I would be so upset with myself if I just released some neutral record about love or whatever. That’s not what I need. That’s not what a lot of people need right now.”
“I would be so upset with myself if I just released some neutral record about love or whatever.”
Even before her inspirational U-turn, Prass once again sought out Spacebomb Records guru Matthew E. White to produce her album. White, who regards Prass as a sibling and lives just blocks away from her apartment, spent hours a day during this creative reset as a sounding board for Prass’s new direction and ideas. Looking back at his first collaboration with her, White admits that his own sense of musical style may have been more heavy-handed than it should have been.
This time around, he made a point to temper his influence. “My job on this record was to be as transparent as I could be and let her be Natalie,” says White, talking over the phone. After getting out of the way, White enthuses over the passion, directness, and clarity that Prass brought to the proceedings. “Natalie’s a very sweet person,” he says. “But there’s a lot of frustration, anger, and power in the record that comes from all the political and socio-political stuff, and hopefully that comes across. I think that’s very important to understanding her state of mind and the attitude she was asking of myself, the band, and the arrangements. All of that is tied together.”
With her rewriting blitz completed, Prass retreated with White and several of Spacebomb’s veteran session players to a small studio just outside Richmond’s city limits called Montrose Recording. Whereas Prass’s debut relied on the use of strings and horns to fill in musical gaps, for The Future and The Pastit was simply other voices coming in for support. “I needed songs that made me feel part of a movement,” she says. “There’s a lot of choir on it. It’s not like gospel choir, but a group of people singing in unison. I needed almost warrior songs to get me out of what I was feeling. It’s a very groove-heavy record. There’s a heavy, heavy pulse to a lot of the songs.”
Vibe in place, The Future and The Past features tracks such as “Oh My,” which Prass says is about the daily frustrations of a non-stop media bombardment (“I feel insane if I keep up with the news—it makes me feel like I’m going out of my mind and I start to unravel”), and “Hot for the Mountain,” which Prass says “originally wasn’t going to be political.” Of the latter, she explains: “It was just going to be about outcasts and how outcasts are actually beautiful and strong people that have different ideas and don’t fit in, but can take over the world with their imaginative way of thinking. That’s still the case to me, but it’s also like, ‘We represent our country, too.’ In high school I was definitely the weird kid. I had four friends and we were all really weird, but we were inseparable—that typical kind of high school story. Any time I see young kids that are a little different I feel so near-and-dear to them. Those are my people.”
The new album from Natalie Prass, The Future and the Past, out June 1.
Natalie Prass has announced her sophomore album, The Future and the Past. It’s out June 1st via ATO. Prass also shared the lead single recently and its music video, directed and produced by Prass and Erica Prince. In a press statement, Prass says she rewrote the new record following the 2016 election. She writes, “I needed to make an album that was going to get me out of my funk, one that would hopefully lift other people out of theirs, too, because that’s what music is all about.” The Future and the Past follows Prass’ 2015 self-titled debut; she also released her Side by Side EP the same year.
Watch Natalie Prass get the PledgeHouse SXSW crowd dancing with new songs from her forthcoming album.
Natalie Prass, whose 2015 self-titled debut earned swoons from tastemakers around the world. Its rich soundcraft fueled intense anticipation for her forthcoming follow-up ‘The Future and the Past.’ Be among the first to hear her new sounds at our SXSW stage.
Songs performed 0:33Oh My3:47Hot for the Mountain13:18Bird of Prey17:57Short Court Style
New album ‘The Future and the Past’ available June
Welcome to the world of Natalie Prass co-produced by Matthew E. White. It looks a lot like our own, but it’s all painted in bright smears of blue and light pink. There are a lot more horns this time. The year of the ’70s singer-songwriter never really took off again, but Prass album certainly did, and that’s mainly due to the boundless creative energy she exhibits on her debut, where the limits are only as high as her ambition. The 2015 album from the Nashville-based singer/songwriter. Not only one of the sharpest up-and-coming songwriters in Nashville, NataliePrass possesses a rare artistic method she infuses into all her endeavors. She handcrafts album artwork and flyers and organizes local vinyl listening parties/drawing sessions, and there appears to be little end to the homespun creativity of this bright young talent. She’s also no slouch in the pipes department either the girl can sing. While her delicate alto evokes clear benchmarks of influence see early Rilo Kiley, Feist, Karen Carpenter, etc. Natalie Prass never seems weighed down by the artists she’s absorbed. Instead, she has developed a refreshing guitar-grounded musical vocabulary and a knack for infectious and entrancing tunes. Still, it’s a spirit of invitation and friendship that continues to be Prass’ most pronounced attribute.
By crafting ornate, grandiose arrangements about heartbreak and loss and desire, she imbues all of these emotions with the dramatic flair they deserve.
Natalie’s live set also got better as the year went on, but she was never short of surprises throughout it all. One night at the Los Angeles’ Troubadour, Prass brought out Ryan Adams on stage for a couple songs that left the crowd speechless (and she was opening for San Fermin mind you). Prass essentially courses through the entirety of her brilliant debut album (Top Albums of 2015) and her incredible backing band is just as mesmerizing as she is. Trey Pollard on guitar, Michael Libramento on bass and Scott Clark on drums all—like Prass—hail from Richmond, Va. and are all essential to enacting Prass’s live experience. In late October, Natalie performed at a few of our festivals this year, her set was highly intimate. She had a few drinks in her and the confidence of her budding career came through with every joke and every gorgeous note as she was among one of the best live performances I saw all year
The self-titled debut is flecked with a lushness buttressed by Prass’ melancholic instincts for storytelling, rounded out by inventive brass and orchestral gestures, tender and exuberant all at once. The compelling stories behind tracks such as “My Baby Don’t Understand Me,” “Bird Of Prey,” “Your Fool,” “Why Don’t You Believe In Me” and others, reveal Prass’ perseverance in nourishing her menagerie of influences into a unique and visionary first album. Her incredible journey includes a nearly decade-long stint in Nashville, shuttling to her native Virginia in the midst of that stay to create her debut album. Prass, now 29 years-old, currently lives in Richmond, where the album was produced, to be, as she puts it, “where the trees are tall, the buildings old, and friends near.”
Her astounding debut, produced by Prass’ childhood friend and Spacebomb studios founder Matthew E. White and his production partner Trey Pollard, was a painstaking effort that remained on the shelf for another two years before its release in early 2015. This nine track compilation is a testament to how Prass’ grit and pursuit of musical perfection stood her well throughout. “I always kind of laugh when they refer to me as a newcomer,” says Natalie. “I think my story is a case of when the opportunity arrived, I was ready.”
Ironically, White’s own surprise success with his acclaimed debut, Big Inner, contributed to the delay. Intense collaborations between Prass, White, and Pollard preceded it all: “I would drive back and forth between Nashville and Richmond doing the pre-production,” she says. “Matt and I did so much planning. He’s very thorough and so am I. We talked for months while I sent him songs and ideas even before we started. We talked out every last detail before tracking. Matt and Trey wrote the arrangements separately. They would say, ‘You take this song and I’ll take that one.’ We took our time. It was my first opportunity to record a full length album and I wanted to do it right.”
Prass and her collaborators share a mutual appreciation for what she calls classic songwriting. “My writing does have so many influences,” she acknowledges. “I go back to Irving Berlin, Sondheim, Burt Bacharach (many reviews cite Bacharach muse Dionne Warwick as a kindred spirit of Prass, with the artist even thanking her in the liner notes) but it all comes down to the strength of your songwriting and your commitment to that.”
Such dedication started early. Born in Cleveland, Prass moved to Tidewater, VA as a child, where she recalls being the only girl in teenage bands. After magnet school she attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, but returned to Virginia after only a year. Soon, she would make her trek to Nashville, eventually attending Middle Tennessee State University and enrolling in their intensive songwriting program. She recalls plotting out her own personal repertoire even during her student days. “I used to space out a lot in class and work out melodies,” she says. “I’d sneak out and go to the bathroom and sing melodies and try out songs, even then. I wrote the melody and lyrics for the song ‘Violently’ that way, then I went home and figured it out on guitar.”
Prass’ distinct vocal command enables her to breathlessly glide over ornately arranged offerings like “My BabyDon’t Understand Me” or croon the almost-country bop of “Never Over You.” Rippling crosscurrents blow through the collection of songs as well as soulful wisps of what several critics have likened to Dusty Springfield’s 1969 blue-eyed soul masterwork Dusty In Memphis. Dozens of musicians contributed to the overall sound, but it’s Prass’ subtle conjurations of longing that make her debut such a powerfully intimate statement.
“A lot of times you’ll be working on a song and it surprises you by turning into something else. Like ‘Christy.’ I like how unnerving it is. It turned into an eerie, very personal song. But the one that is probably most personal to me is ‘My Baby Don’t Understand Me.’” She doesn’t expand any further and she doesn’t need to. The lyrics speak for themselves: ‘Our love is a long goodbye,’ she sings in heartbreaking register. The song that Rolling Stone hailed as “a crumbled relationship ballad of cinematic majesty” stands on its own while also seamlessly rounding out the rest of her magnificent debut album.
With her rewriting blitz completed, Prass retreated with White and several of Spacebomb’s veteran session players to a small studio just outside Richmond’s city limits called Montrose Recording. Whereas Prass’s debut relied on the use of strings and horns to fill in musical gaps, for The Future and The Past it was simply other voices coming in for support. “I needed songs that made me feel part of a movement,” she says. “There’s a lot of choir on it. It’s not like gospel choir, but a group of people singing in unison. I needed almost warrior songs to get me out of what I was feeling. It’s a very groove-heavy record. There’s a heavy, heavy pulse to a lot of the songs.”
The Fat Angel Sings 