Like stumbling across a rare Pokémon or watching the sequel to Avatar, there are certain things that you just assume aren’t going to happen. Sky Ferreira releasing new music was, hate to say it, one of them. But last week in an Instagram post, she did the unthinkable. Six years after she released her debut album, the grimy and sublime Night Time My Time, she confirmed that she was, in fact, ready to share new music with the world. And now that day has come.
The song, titled Downhill Lullaby, is a nearly six-minute gloomfest filled with dirgy vocals and demonic strings that tug you along like an undead funeral procession. If you’re getting Lynchian elements in there too you wouldn’t be mistaken; Sky produced the track alongside Twin Peaks music supervisor Dean Hurley.
Speaking about the track in an interview with Pitchfork, Sky said that she roped in the prowess of Danish violinist Nils Gröndahl, whom she asked to play the instrument “as if you’re one of the birds in Snow White, singing underwater, while slowly being suffocated by plastic”. Quite.
Originally announced in 2015, Sky’s second album Masochism has been subjected to numerous delays. While she told i-D — four years ago! — that she was “having a lot more fun” making the album, the singer lent her hand to a variety of other projects, including acting in the film Baby Driver and starring in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks revival in 2017. In 2018, she wrote on Instagram that her silence around the record’s release “should not be confused for negligence”.
“I deeply care & put everything I have into my music. Including all of my earnings,” she wrote. “I won’t put out something that I don’t stand by or the bare minimum.” It seems now, however, that Masochism is finally on its way. She told Pitchfork that the album was “almost positively” set for a 2019 release date.
Whenever you’re ready.
