On May 26, Turner Cody will release "Lonely Days in Hollywood", his third single from his upcoming record Friends in High Places on Capitane Records. Nothing in Cody's oeuvre up to this point has quite resembled this song. Producer Nicolas Michaux introduces his singular vision for Cody's music on "Lonely Days in Hollywood" as he invokes hints of Serge Gainsbourg and 1980's Leonard Cohen. Cody more speaks than sings "Lonely Days in Hollywood / All the windows closed / I'm lost but in the neighborhood / following my nose" in this eerie panorama of hopes unrealized and spiritual destitution. Ostensibly a morality tale about the darker side of the Los Angeles dream ala Nathaniel West and Raymond Chandler, "Lonely Days in Hollywood" feels just as much a kind of social commentary on popular culture in all its vicissitudes. Cody sings "I took all your bad advice you took all of mine / everyone is always nice and everything is fine / but every tongue is cold as ice and caught up in a bind". "Lonely Days" is an ode to the transitory and transactional nature of stardom and fame but also something more. Sonically, the dry groove of the Soldiers of Love gives this recording the perfect dead-pan sonic texture to fit with Cody's vocal performance.
The music video, shot on the Spanish island of Ibiza during the midst of the Covid pandemic and directed by Michaux, takes the song to an altogether new level. The desolation of this island paradise reminds one of a kind of Venice Beach of the mind, its rolling mountains an imaginary Mexico. It's both "LA" but also not, in keeping with the ambiguity of the song. With the evocative imagery of the video, the mystery of "Lonely Days in Hollywood" and its meaning only deepens.
Turner Cody is a prolific recording artist with a career spanning twenty years. His song "Corner of My Room" was featured in Jacques Audiard's Oscar-nominated 2009 film Un Prophete. He came up in the New York City anti-folk scene alongside The Moldy Peaches and Jeffrey Lewis, and has toured Europe extensively with Herman Dune and Adam Green. For the better part of a decade, Cody has focused on studio albums that hew to the traditions of American writing and recording, while always staying unique and true to himself. Cody's greatest gift is his poetry: his songs tell stories of love and loss, sin and redemption, alienation and toil, and spiritual longing. Turner Cody considers himself to be working in the tradition of great American songwriters going back to Stephen Foster, and including Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Chuck Berry, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan
Friends in High Places is Turner Cody's first release by the Belgian music collective Capitane Records. It was produced by Nicolas Michaux and features The Soldiers Of Love. It is a new sonic direction for Cody, now in the hands of Michaux's combined touch of minimalism, attention to detail, groove, and texture. Friends in High Places will be released worldwide by Capitane Records on June 4.
Check out the single HERE