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Aug 26, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Weyes Blood

Actor/comedian/musician Tim Heidecker (of Tim & Eric and Heidecker & Wood) is releasing a new album, Fear of Death, on September 25 via Spacebomb. Now he has shared another song from it, “Nothing,” that was co-written by Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood), who also sings backing vocals on the song. Befitting the theme of the album, the song is about the finality of death for those who don’t believe in an afterlife. “Nothing, that’s what it amounts to, they say,” sing Heidecker and Mering. “A black void waiting down the road for us one day.” Listen below.

“I wanted to write a religious sounding song about agnosticism,” says Heidecker in a press release. “I wrote it a little poppier/jauntier, but working with Natalie and Drew (Erickson), we smoothed it out into something more haunting and (in my opinion ) beautiful. We crammed the session into the end of an overdub day/night, just the three of us doing it live with Natalie adding those incredible angel harmonies over the bridge. Drew and (Jonathan) Rado later added all sorts of goodness to it. The second verse is a very literal description of my experience at the SXSW premiere of Us. I’m pretty proud of this one in general. I hope it delivers some goosebumps.”

Previously Heidecker shared the album’s title track, “Fear of Death,” via a video for the song, which was one of our Songs of the Week and also featured Weyes Blood.

As well as Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, Heidecker’s backing band on the album features Drew Erickson (Jonathan Wilson, Dawes), The Lemon Twigs’ Brian and Michael D’Addario, Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), and string arrangements by Spacebomb’s Trey Pollard (Foxygen, Bedouine).

“I didn’t know that this record was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it,” Heidecker said in a previous press release. “It took a minute for me to stand back and look at what I was talking about to realize that, yes, I am now a middle-aged man and my subconscious is screaming at me: ‘You are getting old, dude! You are not going to live forever! Put down that cheeseburger!’”

Heindecker previously released the fake break-up album What The Brokenhearted Do… back in June of last year. It was created after alt-right trolls spread a rumor that Heidecker’s wife had left him. But, according to a press release, Heindecker is leaving satire in the wind and shooting straight for the scarily morbid: the inevitability of death.

“This record is a dream come true for me,” said Heidecker. “I got to work with some of the best, and nicest, musicians in town who helped me take some shabby, simple tunes and turn them into something I’m really proud of.”

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