Premiere: Fuck You, Tammy! Shares New Single + Video “Sycamore Trees”
Today, Fuck You, Tammy! release their new single “Sycamore Trees“. This track features layered guitars and ethereal vocals, creating a haunting ambiance that draws listeners in. The melody intertwines with powerful riffs, adding to the gripping emotional weight of the song.
Devery on the track, “Our live arrangement developed over years of playing shows, and had grown into something so beautiful that it made me have to make this record. “You take me for a walk/ under the sycamore trees” is, to me, about being led into a space of potentially terrifying or sublime transformation, much like the experience of entering world of a Lynch film: I wanted the song to be that invitation, and it’s the portal to the world of the rest of the record.
I envisioned the expansiveness of a Bond theme with the menace of Portishead – and instead of being in the hermetic space of the Red Room, I wanted you to follow her into the dark woods, and there she encounters the saxophone solo- the ghostly presence that is waiting for her. The layered guitars and meticulously controlled feedback with the synths evoke the dark woods – the grand piano, the stars overhead and far, far away. The original is beautiful and feels like someone telling a sad and terrible story – ours is that story unfolding in real time.”
FEATURE INTERVIEW:
Can you describe your creative process for “Sycamore Trees”?
For the track: the band had developed this incredible arrangement and take on the song that I felt was darker, more layered and passionate than the original: Jimmy Scott’s version is phenomenal, and so wedded to the imagery of being in the Red Room, and it’s like hearing someone narrate a tragic story. Our version is more like telling the story in real time from the voice’s point of view, in a mysterious and outdoor space: a wilds, a forest. In the studio I wanted the instrumentation to feel like a dangerous forest that sprang up around the voice as she moved forward; the guitar feedback is both the dark trees and dark birds slicing through them overhead; the piano like faraway stars.
When it came time to make the video, we asked Ioulex who did the photography for the EP and who use CRT screens and projections heavily in their work, so they were the perfect collaborators – Dreams are “received transmissions” from the unconscious, and the worlds of TV and film are “received transmissions” as well. As a band we aspire to tap into the same deep well of the dream world as Lynch does, channeling these songs into life in our own way, and using CRT-mediated imagery in this way made sense as the visual expression of our music.
Ioulex had the idea of layering actual footage they had shot of sycamores in Central Park with the band portraits projected via CRT – we all felt that this was a beautiful combination of organic and technological elements and was fitting for a project inspired by television and film. For the video, I knew I wanted to work with CRT imagery consistent with the aesthetic “world” of the EP, but gave them free reign to take that and run with it in the video concept. As far as the process on the shoot, almost everything was shot in their home studio with incredibly ingenious practical effects.
What kind of visual style or aesthetic did you aim for in the video?
Are there any specific influences or inspirations? Devery: “I thought a lot about Blade Runner – anything involving work with projections connotes that for me. I feel like a key line in the song ‘and I’ll see you/ and you’ll see me/ and I’ll see you in the branches that blow” is where the main character is desperate for this connection – and there’s always something very Voight-Kampff test about performing for a camera – you have to pull everything away and offer up what is the most tender.”
From Ioulex: “Listening to “Sycamore Trees” transports you to a mysterious unsettling place, you lose your points of reference and only have the voice to guide you further into the unknown. We love Devery’s reading of Jimmy Scott’s vocals, the way gender roles are rebuilt and intertwined. We start in a dark hallway, and suddenly hear “I got idea man”: the monitor switches on and this voice from another place pulls you down the rabbit hole.
Our initial point of reference was Lee Friedlander’s 1960’s photographs of television screens in motel rooms – there’s a Lynchian quality to this series in the way they anonymously transmit pop iconography, there is a darkness and omnipresence in these images. Hearing the track for the first time we immediately thought of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter – a menacing, meditative unraveling into the abyss, drowning in the ominous starry night sky, floating through the seaweed and being weighed further and further down into the void. Lastly, we referenced Julee Cruise’s Floating Into the Night cover art; she is a revered voice in the Lynchian universe that we wanted to include in homage.
How does this project set the stage for your future work? Are there any new directions you’re excited to explore?
“Sycamore Trees”has set the stage for our future work in that we’ve made a record that showcases our sound and exists in dialog with other serious work, sonically and visually.. And we are VERY excited to expand what we are doing the next record which will be a full length and hope to start recording in spring of 2025! It will partly covers from the Lost Highway era and part originals we are developing, drawing from that same world/ sonic territory, and further exploring the possibilities of how we’ve been using 90’s hallmarks in a way similar to Lynch mining the 1950s. Very excited about taking everything we learned from recording this EP to further develop our sound and our original material debuting next year, and continue to do so even more as a band, in collaboration with each other. We are also really looking forward to touring outside of New York.
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