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After 15 years drumming for Dr. Dog, recording and performing with Taylor Swift, Waxahatchee, The War on Drugs, Kevin Morby, his wife Natalie Prass and many more, scoring Hilary Swank's The Good Mother and releasing solo records hailed as "a crackpot singer-songwriter fantasy" (Rolling Stone), Eric Slick reaches his most honest, hilarious, provocative and productive on New Age Rage. The biggest yet most authentic departure of his career thus far is a sweeping statement about our dystopian, tech-driven future, served on a silver platter of rapturous rock music, robot-funk, sleazy disco and experimental synth-pop. “As much as I am preoccupied with social media, and staying in touch with people, and being active as a musician, I ultimately want people to be brought together,” he tells the Scene. “I don’t want people to be divided — music should be a unifying force. So in my own humble way, I’m trying to put that out with this record.”
New Age Rage is also Eric Slick’s most incisive, fully-formed depiction of his talent as a songwriter, producer and razor-sharp social commentator, as further showcased by the visual world he built in the runup to the record. Described as a dance party for the apocalypse, "Lose Our Minds" is a conceptual reinterpretation of Prince's "1999," accompanied by a music video that landed him in the emergency room with a scratched cornea. "Anxious To Please" is an arena-rock anthem for self-acceptance, with a VR video featuring dancing aliens and absurdly buff dudes. "New Age Rage" is a retro sci-fi saga created with comedian Demi Adejuyigbe (The Good Place, James Corden, Amber Ruffin), capturing the all-too-real fear of being replaced by artificial intelligence, while sampling the sounds of Taco Bell, AOL Instant Messenger and more.
Across the album, the Nashville-via-Philly musician collaborates with co-producer Andy Molholt (Speedy Ortiz), mixer Jeremy Ferguson (Be Your Own Pet, Lambchop), co-writer Kyle Ryan (Kacey Musgraves), his wife Natalie Prass, friends like Diane Coffee, Finom, Kimaya Diggs, mmeadows, and Liam Kazar, his personal hero EYヨ, of Japanese band BOREDOM, and many more. Tonight, he will be joined by Saturday Night Live’s James Austin Johnson, for a special release show at NYC’s TV Eye. The performance falls in the midst of his New Age Rage tour, a multimedia extravaganza he is bringing from coast-to-coast this spring.
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