Andrew Fox’s New Album Is an Imaginary American Road Trip Through the Mind – AdHoc

Andrew Fox’s New Album Is an Imaginary American Road Trip Through the Mind

Shock by Shock brings together over a dozen friends and collaborators.

NYC-based electro-pop guru Andrew Fox left New York a few years ago, only to come back as…  himself? It’s true: Shock by Shock—now available to stream and out March 22—is Fox’s first release under his own name. Previously, he’d been making music as VISUALS, releasing EPs on Nicholas Jaar’s Other People label and on Berlin’s The Song Says.

With Shock by Shock, Fox has simultaneously built on and transcended his earlier brand of moody psych-pop. The album combines rock, folk, soul, and jazz influences, and features over a dozen friends and collaborators, including Nick Kinsey (Kevin Morby, Elvis Perkins), Emily Panic (Foxygen), and Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne).

Title track “Shock by Shock” has the immersive quality of Washed Out’s Paracosm-era synthscapes. “Fear City,” searing and languid, breaks up the album like a mirage in a desert. “Walking in Light” shakes and shimmers with jangly percussion. “Yours Truly”—co-written by Juan Pieczanski (Small Black)—is expansive and aching, calling to mind Sun Airway’s subtly epic “Symphony in White No. 2.” The album ends with a gorgeous, heartbreaking piano and horn outro on “A Man Of No Consequence.”

“Songwriting can be a strange enterprise, somewhere between being a doctor and thief,” Fox told AdHoc in an email. “Shock by Shock was initially self-medication for homesickness: plucking sounds and myths from the reserves of my imaginary America, as I inhabited faraway zones. The album became its own journey, a road trip through the psyche. Sonically, it incorporates the sound and participation of my New York community, operating within a constellation of psychedelic soul, rock and folk music. Weighing in at 15 or so collaborators throughout the production process, it’s the most ambitious bit of music I’ve made. I hope it gives people a little space to dream.”

Shock by Shock is out on March 22. Stream it below.

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