Squirrel Flower is a longtime Stereogum favorite, and Ella Williams is arguably only getting better. "Reelin," the lead single from new album Say A Prayer To The Gods Of Getting Going, was a stunner. Williams has two more impressive previews of the new LP out today.
"Not Me" and "Sick Tooth" show off different sides of Squirrel Flower. The former is an elegant roots-rock ballad with a bit of Beach House grandeur. The latter is a sugar rush shrouded in distortion, an even more blown-out version of what she was doing on "intheskatepark."
Both songs are cool, but "Not Me" is the one that gets an Ella Williams explainer blurb:
This song came to me upon waking in Silver City, NM. I literally rolled out of bed, having had a dream about somebody, grabbed my guitar and pressed record. I’d been reading ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves,’ my grand handbook for life. I was reading a passage about not compromising. Not ‘taking what you can get,’ but taking all that you wish for. Not in a gluttonous way, rather refusing to deprive yourself of desires and the intuitive flow towards those desires. I’d been listening to so much Linda Ronstadt when I wrote it, and I think that really came through. I wanted to let myself really sing, and produce and arrange the song in a way that allowed that.
Watch videos for "Not Me" (by Amaya Peña) and "Sick Tooth" (by Nathaniel Williams) below.
Say A Prayer To The Gods Of Getting Going is out 8/21 via Polyvinyl.
