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Jun 18, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Neil Shukla

Oceanator, aka Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/guitarist Elise Okusami, is releasing a new album, Everything is Love and Death, on August 30 via Polyvinyl. Now she has shared two new songs from it, album opener “First Time” and “Be Here.” Listen to both below.

Okusami had this to say about the new songs in a press release: “‘First Time’ and ‘Be Here’ very much live in the same world for me. They’re describing the same day—one kind of in the afternoon, and one overnight. ‘First Time’ is what I’ve been calling my Thin Lizzy song, with the harmonizing guitar riff. And ‘Be Here’ is a little more floaty, synth-y, less in your face-y. Will Yip played drums and my brother Michael played bass on ‘First Time,’ but ‘Be Here’ is all me on everything! It was super fun to record all those parts and have the song come together. Even though they sound different I really wanted them to live together, and I’m stoked to be releasing them as a double single.”

Previously Oceanator shared the album’s first single, “Get Out,” via a music video.

Everything is Love and Death is Oceanator’s third album and the follow up to Nothing’s Ever Fine, which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2022, and Things I Never Said, which initially came out in August 2020 via her own Plastic Miracles label and then was reissued physically in February 2021 by Polyvinyl. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2020.

“I feel like these songs are honing in on and parsing the same themes as previous records, more settled and clearer.” Okusami says of the new album and how it finishes what she started with the first two. “I’ve gotten better at listening to the rational part of my brain, the understanding that things aren’t going to work. I know better but I’m gonna do it anyway, because everything is love and death.”

In 2023 Oceanator shared a new song, “Part Time,” which was co-written with Cheekface’s Greg Katz. It is not featured on the new album, but was one of our Songs of the Week.

Oceanator is one of the artists on our Covers of Covers album, which came out in March 2022 via American Laundromat. She covered Elliott Smith’s “The Biggest Lie.” Check the cover out here.

Read our interview with Oceantor about Nothing’s Ever Fine.

Read our interview with Oceanator about Things I Never Said.

Read our review of Nothing’s Ever Fine here.

Read our review of Things I Never Said here.

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