Sydney indie-pop artist Nick Ward has joined forces with E^ST to mint his first new song for 2022, a heart-wrenching pseudo-ballad titled ‘Funeral’.
Carried by a woozy, widescreen soundscape of sombre acoustic guitars and hazy atmospheric hums, the track sees Ward explore conflicting feelings of grief and guilt in a powerfully honest and intimate way. It was written to honour his late grandparents, chronicling the emotions he felt when he attended their funerals.
As the singer-songwriter explained in a press release: “Grief wasn’t anything like I expected – there was no romance in it, no Hollywood; not even really that much crying. This song is about going to [my grandparents’] funerals and the guilt of feeling nothing at all – the way your brain protects itself from something painful, and how I just wish I had something to connect me to that moment.
“I felt guilty that I wasn’t mourning or crying – it was almost like life was going forward as usual, just without them for some reason.”
‘Funeral’ – which also features guest vocals from Ashwarya and Simon Lam of Kllo and Armlock – arrives alongside a spellbinding video helmed by Ward himself. It draws notable inspiration from the work of filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami and Roy Andersson, as well as the documentary-esque filmmaking in the HBO series Succession.
Ward mused that the clip offered him a sense of catharsis in its development, saying: “It feels strangely fitting that the process of making the song was actually the antidote to the feelings the song addresses.”
Check out the video for ‘Funeral’ below:
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‘Funeral’ comes as the lead single from Ward’s forthcoming second EP, ‘Brand New You’, announced today (January 27) and due out on April 15 via Hunnydew Recordings. The eight-track record – which also features earlier single ‘Princess’ – is described as the second instalment in a planned trilogy, building on the themes and musicality explored on last year’s ‘Everything I Wish I Told You’.
The EP covers topics of “change, trauma, gender, ego and all the pains of young adulthood,” Ward said a statement accompanying the news. “If my first project, ‘Everything I Wish I Told You’, explored internal discussions I have about my identity, then this new project poses the same questions but explores them through my relationships with other people, and the world around me.
“It’s not ‘Who am I?’ – it’s ‘Who am I to you?’ Invention versus recreation.”
Take a look at the cover art and tracklisting for ‘Brand New You’ below:
1. Alien
2. Steve Jobs
3. Brand New You (ft. Zion Garcia)
4. Entrance Music
5. Funeral (ft. E^ST)
6. Princess
7. Blanket (Home To You)
8. Heaven