Brooklyn trio Nation of Language have shared a new song, ‘The Grey Commute’, the latest offering from their forthcoming album A Way Forward. The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Gary Canino. Watch and listen below.
“In some ways ‘The Grey Commute’ is one of the more upbeat songs of the record, but in truth it’s one that was born out of much more depressing stuff,” songwriter/vocalist Ian Devaney explained in a statement. “As I was working on the lyrics I had a kind of fixation on terrible tax policies, our cultural addiction to meaningless consumption, and it all got swept together into this punchy, kind of fun track.” He continued:
To give a sense of time: the Republican tax plan, under which we’re currently living, was just being passed and it was pretty clear just how mind-bindingly stupid it was. Such deep cuts to the taxes of the hyper-wealthy and corporations were both shocking and not shocking at all, and it was difficult to comprehend that anyone thought it wouldn’t lead to the exacerbation of the inequality and instability that defines our time. But here we are. You can see everything I felt then pretty clearly represented on the page when absent any backbeat and melody, but the rant gets dressed up a bit with some bounciness on the final cut to help serve as a bit of a Trojan horse to hopefully get the sentiment across.
Nation of Language’s A Way Forward is due out November 5 via Play It Again Sam. The band have also today announced a worldwide deal with [PIAS]. They’ve already shared the album singles ‘A Word & A Wave’, ‘Across That Fine Line’, ‘Wounds of Love’, and ‘This Fractured Mind’.
