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Jul 09, 2019 Lower Dens By Christopher Roberts

Lower Dens (which is led by singer/songwriter Jana Hunter) are releasing a new album, The Competition, on September 6 via Ribbon Music. Previously they shared a video for its first single, “Young Republicans” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Now they have shared another song from the album, “I Drive,” also via a video for the track. Watch it below.

Jason Nocito directed the black & white video, which features choreography by Veleda Roehl and dancers Stephannie Henriquez and Steven Jeltsch. The song finds Hunter lamenting, “Why can’t we be with the ones we were made to love?”

Hunter had this to say about the song in a press release: “Like a lot of queer and trans people, I’ve learned that real family is made, and it isn’t necessarily blood. Even my blood relatives, we work for that familial connection and trust. This song is about leaving behind obligations to people who don’t love or care about you, being with and about people who do. It’s a feeling so strong it’s driving me. That’s the driving I’m doing.”

The Competition is the follow-up to 2015’s Escape From Evil. A previous press release said The Competition “might be Hunter’s most vulnerable, hook-filled album yet, a leftfield, resistance pop record that could only be released in 2019.”

Hunter had this to say about the album in the previous press release: “The issues that have shaped my life, for better or for worse, have to do with coming from a family and a culture that totally bought into this competitive mindset. I was wild and in a lot of pain as a kid; home life was very bleak, and pop songs were a guaranteed escape to a mental space where beauty, wonder, and love were possible. I wanted to write songs that might have the potential to do that.”

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