Current Joys Share New Single 'Lullaby For The Lost'
Current Joys, the songwriting moniker of Nick Rattigan, has shared 'Lullaby For The Lost,' the third single from his new album East My Love, due out October 11th via Secretly Canadian.
On the emotionally rich track, he urges himself to remember that “we’ll get oh so strong” despite the depths of despair he may be feeling in the moment. “‘Lullaby for the Lost’ was one of the ones written as if I was talking to myself – I was the person holding the Gatorade in the marathon,” Rattigan says. “I wanted it to be very slow and meditative, with these punctuations of lyrics that I really wanted to stick out. I felt like it was powerful to accentuate certain points, but also let the song be a meditative comfort to the listener.”
Rattigan wrote East My Love alone in the woods in Tennessee, with no cell reception and nobody in earshot for miles. Composed three years before Love + Pop, the experimental pop double record he released in 2023 and 2024 that featured Lil Yachty, Lala Lala, & Slow Hollows, the songs on East My Love felt too raw to confront until he felt well and truly out from underneath the cloud that had been cast over him. Rattigan describes the songs as “landmines” that, for years, threatened to upend his carefully balanced mental state. “They were just triggers that would put me back in this emotional space, and I think eventually I got to a place where they were more comforting,” he recalls. “That’s what I hope people find out of the record – a solace from any anxieties or depressions.”
East My Love, the resplendent, country-tinged 12th album by Current Joys, feels familiar. It’s meant to: the 12 songs contained within dive deep into the rich folklore of the American West to tell time-worn tales of love and trauma, heartbreak and spiritual renewal. Cast with a warm glow and finding Nick Rattigan tapping into some of his lushest, most high-fidelity production to date, it’s the kind of album that listeners could see themselves within, and, hopefully, keep close when they’re most in need of reassurance or escapism.
Lead single 'California Rain' acts like a tableau depicting Rattigan’s attempt to escape his demons, its charged lyrics enforcing the tidal-wave production, whereas 'They Shoot Horses' translates vulnerability about his struggles with relationships into a vocal performance that’s so ragged it feels like it could disintegrate at any moment.