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Jun 21, 2022 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Em Joseph

New York singer/songwriter Frances Chang has recorded with a number of bands and pseudonyms over the years, most recently cutting her teeth in the NY art punk scheme with her band, giant peach. These days, she’s now releasing music under her own name, crafting urgent, psychedelic, and resonant singer/songwriter fare with her upcoming debut LP, support your local nihilist. For her debut album, Chang gathered her own bedroom recordings and brought them into the studio, pairing them with heavy analog production from Hunter Davidsohn (Sheer Mag, Porches).

Ahead of the album’s release Chang has already shared the record’s title track, and today she’s back with her new single, “i quit cigs,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“i quit cigs” is an enthralling rollercoaster of mood and emotion, beginning as a gently crooned meditation, initially carried by wispy strands of slowcore guitar and ethereal vocals. The song unfurls slowly but steadily, with bursts of gnarled distortion and sharp squawks of saxophone darting into the mix as the song’s anxious undercurrent becomes more and more prominent. The track eventually builds into a towering apex of discordant beauty before releasing its built-up tension in a final cathartic burst. In the track’s final moments, Chang almost seems to find a small measure of peace, drawing the song to a close with her vocals floating on a bed of tranquil synths.

As Chang describes, the song itself follows the building anxiety of quitting cigarettes. “This song, like so many of my songs, is really about anxiety, and what happens when you resist or avoid it,” she explains. “I’m really interested in quitting things, which I feel like is an unpopular topic of conversation but I think it’s because I relate so much to my mind being tied up with addictive thinking. When I quit cigs, I basically came face-to-face with my anxiety in a rawer way than I’d previously been allowing myself to and I (anxiously) thought I’d be that nerve-wracked forever. It evened out and I felt like myself again after a few months though.”

“I recorded this track at home when I quit cigs in May 2019 and more recently Andrea Schiavelli helped me mix it and also recorded my friend Carolyn Hietter playing sax on it. There was definitely some deep listening / communication happening when I explained the song to her and I believe it was her first take that we used. Her playing adds so much to the song, really hits me emotionally.”

“This video was made by Slowfoam / Madelyn Byrd. I have been a fan of their art for a while. It was a bit of a collaborative process, figuring out how to translate the song to a visual place, and I also feel like the end result hits very much. It was really fun talking so specifically and critically about such abstract images/dream objects.”

Check out the song and video below. support your local nihilist is out July 22nd on destiny is a dog.