Baio (Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio) Announces New Album, Shares Videos for Two New Songs | Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
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Baio (Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio) Announces New Album, Shares Videos for Two New Songs

Dead Hand Control Due Out January 29, 2021 via Glassnote; Listen to “Endless Me, Endlessly” and “What Do You Say When I’m Not There?” Now

Nov 18, 2020 Baio Photography by Pooneh Ghana

Baio (Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio) has announced his third solo album, Dead Hand Control, and shared its first two singles, “Endless Me, Endlessly” and “What Do You Say When I’m Not There?,” via videos for the new songs. Dead Hand Control is due out January 29, 2021 via Glassnote. Check out the two videos/songs below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

Baio released his debut solo album, The Names, in 2015 via Glassnote, and released his sophomore album, Man of the World, in 2017, also via Glassnote.

Dead Hand Control was recorded at Damon Albarn’s 13 Studios in London and Baio’s C+C Music Factory studio in Los Angeles (founded with Vampire Weekend bandmate Chris Tomson). Baio wrote all the songs on the album himself, except for the near 10-minute long closing track, “O.M.W.,” which was written with his Vampire Weekend bandmate Ezra Koenig. According to a press release, the album’s title comes from two sources: “Dead Hand” is the name “a rumored Soviet missile system designed to obliterate America” and “Dead Hand Control” is “a legal strategy for attempting to control the beneficiaries of your will after you die.”

“I was looking at the past five years of American life and obsessing about topics like death, wills, and nuclear war,” Baio says. “But at its heart, it’s about how the only thing you can control is the way you treat the people in your life.”

Baio says that “Endless Me, Endlessly” is “a simple song about being there in every possible capacity for someone else. Through hard times just as much as good times. In a way, it’s a bit of a fantasy - a single person cannot be everything to someone else. Lately, though, I have found fantasy to be a thing of comfort.”

He adds that “What Do You Say When I’m Not There?” is “the polar opposite emotionally. It’s an ode to insecurity and the fact that you can never truly know what is going on in someone else’s mind. With this song I tried to strike a pointed contrast between melancholy lyrics and an upbeat, sunny energy.”

Also, read our 2015 interview with Baio about The Names.

Dead Hand Control Tracklist:

1. Dead Hand Control
2. Endless Me, Endlessly
3. What Do You Say When I’m Not There?
4. Dead Hand
5. Take It From Me
6. Caisse Noire
7. Never Never Never
8. O.M.W.

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