You probably think you’ve seen all there is to see in horror. You know every cliché, can sense every jump scare, and know better than to go exploring unexplained noises in a creepy old house. Well, forget all of that. Bartees Strange’s new album, ‘Horror’, is here to remind you all that the real enemy isn’t some creepy janitor in a mask; it’s life itself.
This is a ‘horror’ story that spans generations. It’s a story that encompasses all the things that make us human, from memories of bygone eras to a future that’s yet to unfold, connecting threads through all those chapters to create a tapestry that is as rich and nuanced as life itself. It’s the tale of queer, Black America, of deep-rooted anxieties derived from a hereditary sense that you’re never truly at home in the nation that raised you. It’s a story that builds you up and knocks you back into the rubble at a moment’s notice, one that leaves you with the gnawing, unsettling feeling that you must keep an eye over your shoulder.
“When people think of horror, they think of the monster under your bed,” Bartees states, “whereas I’m more interested in the Midsommar or Hereditary style of horror, the kind that’s about the feeling of doom that follows you throughout your life and keeps you constantly uneasy.”
An amalgamation of all the things that have forged Bartees into the man he is today, ‘Horror’ is a record that fights against definition, refusing to be forced into a box by the borders of traditional genres. Pulling from his obsession with music history, both his own and that of the decades that preceded him, it’s an album that took every ounce of effort he could muster, culminating in a patchwork collection of songs that can accurately be described as a piece of art.
Diving deep into genres as disparate as trip-hop, indie-rock, and Deep South country, the process of creating ‘Horror’ couldn’t have been more different to how Bartees released his previous album, 2022’s ‘Farm to Table’.
“I made ‘Farm to Table’ in a week and then released it, so I didn’t even know if I liked the songs,” he chuckles, “but with this record, I really took my time. It had to have peaks and valleys, a dynamic arc; it couldn’t be too on the nose.”
Finding the right moments to subvert expectation while still keeping the record coherent and consistent was the key to nailing down the themes, sounds, and order of the album, with the notoriously tricky middle of the record unlocking what would become ‘Horror’.
“I knew I wanted the album to start with a homage to the 70s with all these big guitar hooks and references to bands like Parliament Funkadelic, and it felt right that it ended with ‘Backseat Banton’. Once I got down ‘Loop Defenders’, ‘Doomsday Buttercup’, and ‘Lovers’, they bridged the album together, and it was like, ‘Ok, this is gonna work out’.”
Each of these songs illuminates a different idea brought to the fore by a different period of his life. The foundational importance of his family bleeds into his own self-discovery as a high-schooler in the early 00s before using a return to his Oklahoman roots as a glimmer of light in what is a dark tunnel full of unknown future challenges.
“I grew up with a Black father who loved the Brothers Johnson and instilled in me that Eddie Hazel was the best guitarist in the world; when I was choosing songs for the record, my mom said ‘Don’t cut ‘Hit It Quit It’’, because I mention Sly Stone, who’s her favourite artist. Then I got super interested in the idea that people who were so disparate all knew and listened to each other’s music, which brought me to Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young, so the first half is a melange of what shaped my childhood.”
He continues: “Then it careens into my indie-rock golden era, with all these songs that to me are Radiohead, TV On The Radio, or Gorillaz, and then ending with that folky, ugly stuff that everyone was doing in Oklahoma when I was growing up. I just love this album because it’s everything I ever wanted to do when I thought about a career in music. I don’t care if people like it, I just wanted to present the idea that you can do whatever you want.”
Coming into the professional music world relatively later in life allowed Bartees to properly explore his taste and talents, with his personal musical history providing the perfect foundations for this excellently experimental new era.
“I learned to play guitar from copying songs on the radio,” he reveals, “then I joined hardcore bands, then played in country bands and jazz bands, and then got really interested in clawhammer guitar and bluegrass stuff.”
“I learned the basics for a lot of different genres and started to plug stuff together and see if it made sense; I would be in hardcore bands and say to my friends, ‘Hey, we should bring in this electronic beat’. I think all of that sets me up pretty well; I want to have a super long career like Nick Cave or The National, so where I used to wish all this came to be a bit earlier in life, now I’m just grateful to be doing it at all and want to keep it up as long as I can.”
If Bartees can retain the magic that allows ‘Horror’ to shine so brightly, then there’s no reason why he can’t have as enviable a career as some of his musical heroes. The way in which ideas coalesce across the record, or even in the same song, is truly individual. To try to narrow it down and describe it is refreshingly impossible to do. “It’s everything I wanted it to be; it’s post-punk, pop, rap, house, and all this old shit fused together. I love this album, man.”
“I’m interested in the Midsommar or Hereditary style of horror”
If you’re trying to make something that seamlessly encompasses roughly 40 years of cross-genre music, you need to assemble a pretty useful team of producers to help you get it right. Well, guess what? Bartees nailed that, too.
“There were so many phases for this record. I worked with Yves and Lawrence Rothman, who produced Yves Tumor’s ‘Heaven To a Tortured Mind’, because I had to know how they managed to get what felt like old and new production together. Then I had the traditional team of me in my basement for days and days with my friend Chris Connors, but I finished the album with Jack Antonoff, who basically donated his skills so that I could make a good record into a great one.”
Sorry, Jack Antonoff? As in, the Jack Antonoff?
“Honestly, I thought I’d finished it until I met Jack. He listened to it and said, ‘Ok, I’m gonna work on this with you because I think this could be amazing’. I just laughed and was like, ‘I cannot afford you at all’, but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it’ and was so generous with his time. His involvement was really important confidence-wise because he had me produce on the new Bleachers record, too, so it was super special, and I learned a lot.”
Creating music alongside relative strangers or brand-new friends is never easy, especially not with an album as intimately personal as ‘Horror’, but Bartees knew that authenticity had to be at the heart of the record for it to really click together.
“The hardest part really was towards the end when you’re just tweaking for months. It reached a point where I hated the music, I hated myself, I hated everyone around me, but it was all totally worth it. I had no problem telling anyone anything when we were recording. It’s like lying to your therapist, like if you can’t tell your producer everything, they probably shouldn’t be your producer!”
“I called the project ‘Horror’ from day one,” Bartees recalls, “because I was so scared. I was scared of the content and how naked I felt, but I also thought, ‘Well, I can’t be the only one who’s afraid’, so it became this way of me trying to connect with other terrified people.”
“I called the project ‘Horror’ from day one, because I was so scared”
Frankly, the number of terrified people increased globally following the re-election of Donald Trump as US President last November. For Bartees, a former political speechwriter in the Obama Administration born in an overwhelmingly Republican state, this is a set of circumstances that underline the importance of this album at this time.
Tracks such as ‘Baltimore’, which sees Bartees try to think of a place safe enough to raise a Black family in North America, or ‘17’, which describes a time when he felt “too Black for the room,” speak to the continued racial injustice prevalent in the States.
“What’s happening now is the story of America: one big win, then twenty steps back. I grew up with my parents telling me stories of the Ku Klux Klan and of their great-grandparents who were slaves. All of this stuff has always been happening, it’s just louder now.”
He continues: “I also keep seeing people saying, ‘Oh man, 2025 is gonna be such a great year for music because of all the bad shit that’s going on’, but that’s such a white, Western way of looking at it. There’s always someone going through it, even if the majority of people are fine, and there’s always been great music in spite of that. The Roaring Twenties weren’t great for everyone but there was still great music being made, which is all the stuff that The Beatles took forty years later and got famous with!”
As much as the album is inherently dark and ominous, there is nonetheless an unerring sense of hope stitched into it. Closing track ‘Backseat Banton’ is the clearest example of this, existing as a song which sees Bartees throw off the shackles of self-doubt and cut himself loose for a future of his own design and choosing. This hope and determination to make the best of whatever situation he finds himself in is exactly what he’s using to get through upcoming political challenges.
“People should start small-scale by looking after themselves and their neighbours, make sure you attend school board meetings and keep books on shelves. There’s been so much distraction and so much noise that people haven’t taken action locally. Everyone was so busy trying to save the world that we forgot about the neighbourhood.”
It’s this sense of community that Bartees carries with him through ‘Horror’, explaining national trauma through personal experiences, making the album’s emotional moments all the more visceral. By forging an album so deeply entrenched in his heritage, Bartees is ready to be a guiding light for all the kids growing up in the same unstable world that he himself is so used to.
“I hope the record allows me to play more shows so that I can connect with more people who feel alone or feel othered. When I was a kid, Bloc Party were huge for me, so I’m hoping that I can be that queer Black kid from Oklahoma that people can see is around and there for them.”
Bartees Strange’s album ‘Horror’ is out 14th February.
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