Sometimes, the universe lines things up just right. Well, almost just right.
On Nov. 2, two days after Halloween, the wildly inventive Bartees Strange will kick off three weeks of North American tour dates with a show at the Vivarium in Milwaukee. The traveling schedule is in support of Strange’s new album titled — wait for it — Horror.
With trick-or-treat candy still fresh, fans will get a big taste of the record that came out earlier this year and continued Strange’s defiance of genre. Horror pulls in everything from soul to country to rap-rock, reflecting the sounds he was exposed to early on.
As it says in the album notes, “His dad hipped him to Parliament Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac, Teddy Pendergrass and Neil Young. Those influences merged with Strange’s interest in hip-hop, country, indie rock and house, culminating in a record that feels completely original.”
Tickets to Bartees Strange’s tour-launching show Nov. 2 at the Vivarium go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. this Friday, Oct. 3, online and at the Pabst/Riverside box offices.
Bartees Strange artist bio
Born in Ipswich, England, to a military father and opera-singer mother, Bartees Leon Cox Jr. had a peripatetic early childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Okla. Later, Bartees cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn while working in the Barack Obama administration and (eventually) the environmental movement.
Strange was raised on fear. His family told him scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place; and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared. Strange says of his new record:
In a way, I think I made this record to reach out to people who may feel afraid of things in their lives too. For me, it’s love, locations, cosmic bad luck or that feeling of doom that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I think that it’s easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feels the same. This album is just me trying to connect. I’m trying to shrink the size of the world. I’m trying to feel close — so I’m less afraid.
