FOXING has garnered a reputation as a band that goes big (right after we discovered them in late 2013 / early 2014). With each release, the St. Louis-based group has appeared downright determined to top the expansiveness of their previous works. But with three sprawling and well-received records now under their belt, the band had seemingly left themselves little ground to uncover.
But remember, this is Foxing. Just when you think you know what to expect, they exceed every expectation.
Enter “Draw Down The Moon“, the band’s exhilarating new album coming out August 6 from their label, Grand Paradise. Here, they tackle the biggest subject possible: the universe. More specifically, “it’s about the idea of your cosmic significance,” explains frontman Conor Murphy. “The way you feel like a tiny speck in the grand scheme of the universe, that’s a feeling everybody has. You can get lost thinking about how small you are. ‘Draw Down The Moon’ explores how our connections to people and places and ideas are what binds us to the universe and reality”. Fans can pre-order the album here.
To coincide with today’s pre-order launch, Foxing has shared another new song from “Draw Down The Moon” called “Where The Lightning Strikes Twice”. An arena-ready anthem about luck, it combines Foxing’s effortless, grandiose approach with the upbeat influence of Passion Pit/Phoenix/MGMT/’00s-era indie.
“Draw Down The Moon” came together after working for more than a year at the band’s studio in St. Louis, with guitarist Eric Hudson at the helm as producer. From there, the band took them to Georgia, where they holed up for a couple of weeks with members of Manchester Orchestra. Combining the efforts of two bands who are each known for composing such ambitious works might have been a recipe for disaster, but the collaborative process widened the scope of an already bold project.
A huge portion of Foxing’s inspiration over the years has been both religion and the lore around role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. But for “Draw Down The Moon”, a title derived from Margot Adler’s ritual book Drawing Down The Moon, the band has been taking that idea of magic and rituals to an other-worldly and involved level.
Earlier this spring, a link was posted that led to an early 90’s looking website with nothing but six “rituals” on-screen with only one unlocked – an Ouija-style puzzle to solve. The reward for figuring it out? Early access to the band’s first new song in over three years, the sprawling “Speak With The Dead” featuring WHY?.
Each month, the rituals continue to get more challenging yet equally rewarding. Ritual 2 coincided with “Go Down Together,” an unstoppably catchy, synth-driven anthem about debt. Prior to the song’s release, a text adventure game in the style of 1977’s Zork went up at drawdownthemoon.org; once completed, fans received an 8-bit version of “Go Down Together,” as well as the chords & lyrics to the song to encourage fan covers and interpretations.
The video for “Go Down Together” was co-directed and partially animated by Conor himself in a process called rotoscoping. First, everything is shot live-action and then each frame is drawn over individually to bring the footage to life in a totally different way.
