Anna Meredith Announces New Album FIBS, Shares Lead Single “Paramour”
Photo by Gem Harris
Scottish composer Anna Meredith trafficks in bombastically accessible avant-garde, combining flickering electronica with classical instrumentation. We last heard her via the soundtrack to Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, and today, July 10, she’s announcing her sophomore effort, FIBS.
Alongside the news is the album’s lead single “Paramour,” a glistening MIDI freakout with a tempo apparently maxing out at 176 BPM. “Paramour” is attached to a one-take video that guides the listener through Meredith and her band’s extensive instrumentation via a camera running along a Lego-built railroad.
Meredith and her band continue to layer surprising instruments into the fold; a clarinet starts “Paramour” while a xylophone sweeps it away, making space for a mid-song tuba and percussion explosion. Meredith’s signature synths underpin all the song’s switchback turns, guiding the blistering tempo to its conclusion.
Meredith writes that fibs are “lies—but nice friendly lies, little stories and constructions and daydreams and narratives that you make for yourself or you tell yourself,” while a press release ensures that the album will be “45 minutes of technicolour maximalism, almost perpetual rhythmic reinvention.”
FIBS is out Oct. 25 via Black Prince Fury/Moshi Moshi. Watch the video for “Paramour” below, then check out more footage of Meredith in action with a 2017 performance from the Paste archives. Further down, you can find all of the album’s details, plus Meredith’s tour dates.
