For reasons still being unearthed in therapy, my mind jumps to three things at the mention of the month of December: my dead dog, Peanut, the white dress I wore to my first communion and King Krule’s 6 Feet Beneath The Moon. It was during the chilly December of 2013 that this equally chilly album soundtracked my first homecoming since departing for college, a time characterized by a lot of aimless driving and overwhelming nostalgia for high school. And now, two years later, at the start of December 2015, it seems I have some new King Krule material to get me through another winter break full of aimless driving and the even more overwhelming confusion of approaching adulthood.
Appropriately announced on Dec. 1, King Krule (aka Archy Marshall) will release a multi-disciplinary volume of work titled A New Place 2 Drown. The project, set to drop on the 10th, features an art book and a documentary, accompanied by a 37-minute new album. A few tracks — “Any God of Yours,” ”Sex With Nobody” and “Arise Dear Brother” — are already available on the project’s website, which requires you to inconveniently hold down the music tab while the songs play; if you let go, they stop. (My fingers got tired, so I ended up placing the bowl of fried rice I was eating on my track pad.)
Of the new songs, “Arise Dear Brother” is the fullest of the three. It follows the artist’s often-employed format: discussion of trouble with a lover, featuring an erratic drum loop and some dark jazz chords, met by his mellow baritone vocals. But Krule seems different; he’s still angry and desperate to appear apathetic — “Even though you fucked him / I don’t really give a shit” — but this time, he’s also more accepting of reality — “It reminds me why she’s not my kind.” Though the track would fit in comfortably with the rest of Beneath The Moon, it gives us a glimpse of a more mature Marshall and reminds us the 21-year-old is just trying to grow up, too.