Marisa Anderson released a new single, “The Fire This Time.” The track will appear on the guitarist’s forthcoming album, Still, Here, due out via Thrill Jockey Records on September 23.
Anderson previously shared the Still, Here singles “Waking” and “La Llorona.” The guitarist now follows with “The Fire This Time,” a nod to the 1963 James Baldwin civil rights essay, The Fire Next Time. Anderson composed the song following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Marisa shared her recollections from the day she created “The Fire This Time”:
“I made this song on May 30, 2020 in response to the news of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. I didn’t know what to do, I felt so angry and sad, I started making this song that morning and worked on it all day until late. Around midnight I put it up on Bandcamp as a benefit for bail relief for the folks in Minneapolis who were getting arrested for protesting. I left it up for a month to raise money and then I took it down. For this re-release I edited the track a little bit differently, making the ending stretch out and refining the pedal steel voices in the mixing and mastering process. The police siren that you hear around the 30 second mark is real, there were cops going up and down my street that day and the siren was picked up by one of the mics. It seemed like for the rest of that hard summer you couldn’t escape the sound of sirens here in Portland.”
Listen to “The Fire This Time” below:
