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Jul 31, 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 the album’s fourth single, “Drift Away,” via a music video. The song features backing vocals from NNAMDÏ. Check it out below.

Okusami had this to say about the new song in a press release: “I had listened to Dopesmoker the night before and was in a sludge-y kind of mood. The bass was the first thing to come for the song and the whole thing was built around that. Some of the lyrics came right away, too, but the rest was worked out during demo-ing and in the studio. I kind of see this song as like the anchor song of the record, not necessarily in terms of tone but in terms of vibe. The video was all shot when we went to do the album cover photo shoot, and I wanted it to just be a kind of drifting, unsure, nebulous sort of thing. The leapt from a sinking ship to a crumbling pier line was in there early on and kind of sums up the feeling of leaving one unsure and tenuous situation for another. Since I wanted to do kind of just like a talking drone-y thing for myself the whole time, I thought it would be cool to have a guest vocalist on there. NNAMDÏ absolutely killed it. I am so pleased with what he did on the track and I think it really brings it into an even spookier world.””

Previously Oceanator shared the album’s first single, “Get Out,” via a music video. Then she shared two more new songs from it, album opener “First Time” and “Be Here.” “Be Here” was one of our Songs of the Week.

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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