Tim Heidecker, the comic architect of the On Cinema universe and the chaotic Office Hours podcast, has announced a follow-up to last year’s What the Brokenhearted Do…. Fear Of Death, a “Serious Album about Serious Topics,” is an album-length collaboration with a number of heavy hitters, from Natalie Mering of Weyes Blood to Brian and Michael D’Addario of The Lemon Twigs to Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado. (Fans of Office Hours will know that Heidecker’s been discussing his collaboration with Mering, who guested on a previous episode, for a while now.)
Touted as Heidecker’s “biggest sounding and most fleshed out album yet”—a 14-piece string ensemble makes an appearance—the LP falls not in line with his comedic releases about Trump and Herman Cain, but rather the more straight-faced tunes on 2016's In Glendale. “I didn’t know that this record was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it,” Heidecker says in a 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!’”
Accompanying the announcement is a video for lead single “Fear Of Death,” a rollicking, riff-heavy stomper with rich backing vocals from Mering that meditates on the end of one’s partying days. Check it out below, preferably while sipping something non-alchoholic.
Fear Of Death is slated for release on September 25 via Spacebomb Records. Pre-order it here and check out Robert Beatty’s artwork—redolent of bygone church literature—below.