Odesza
Alexander Babarikin*
It’s been five long years since Clayton Knight and Harrrison Mills released a new album as ODESZA. Fans of the Seattle-based based duo don’t have much longer to wait, though. The pair announcing Wednesday (March 23) that their fourth studio album, The Last Goodbye, is dropping July 22.
The album will be released via ODESZA’S own label — Foreign Family Collective — and Ninja Tune. (The two labels partnered in July of 2021 in a deal under which Ninja Tune handles the global release, promotion and distribution of the entire Foreign Family Collective catalog.) Vinyl copes of The Last Goodbye are currently available for pre-order. Album collaborators include Låpsley, Ólafur Arnolds, Julianna Barwick, Izzy Bizu and Charlie Houston.
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This crew will join the venerable blues and soul singer Bettye LaVette, the vocalist on the duo’s first album single “The Last Goodbye” (released last month), and Portuguese singer-songwriter MARO, the vocalist on ODESZA’s most recent single, “Better Now.” The Knocks also join this collaborator crew via the album’s third single, the defiantly swaggering uptempo “Love Letter,” out today.
In a press release, The Last Goodbye is called “a sweeping sonic experience that speaks to themes of connection, reminiscence and the impact we impart on one another. It’s a vivid celebration of the people and moments that have left fingerprints on our existence, echoing throughout the record. As the duo’s most personal record to date, it’s a brilliant collection which looks to interweave the past and the present in a euphoric way.”
“Over the past few years we’ve been able to reflect on who we are, what it means to do what we do, and in the end, who we are doing this for,” adds ODESZA. “We became focused and inspired by the impact our families and friends have imprinted on us, and how we want to continue to echo that out as we move through this life. We found comfort in the fact that those who we love stay with us, that they become intrinsically part of us, in a way.”
On July 29-31, ODESZA will play their first live shows in three years at Seattle’s Pledge Climate Arena. The duo’s previous tour — behind 2017’s Grammy-nominated A Moment Apart — grossed $9.1 million and sold 198,000 tickets in 2018-19 across 35 shows, according to Billboard BoxScore. The album spent 10 weeks on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at No. 3 in September of 2017. Mills and Knight also worked with Australian producer Golden Features for the 2020 collaborative album, Bronson.
Here’s The Last Goodbye tracklist:
- This Version Of You (feat. Julianna Barwick)
- Wide Awake (feat. Charlie Houston)
- Love Letter (feat. The Knocks)
- Behind The Sun
- Forgive Me (feat. Izzy Bizu)
- North Garden
- Better Now (feat. MARO)
- The Last Goodbye (feat. Bettye LaVette)
- All My Life
- Equal (feat. Låpsley)
- Healing Grid
- I Can’t Sleep
- Light Of Day (feat. Ólafur Arnalds
Listen to “Love Letter” below: