Stream: Wise Blood, “Rat”

April 10, 2013



Update 5/29/13: "Rat" now has a bleakly troublemaking music video, co-directed by Michael Lawrence and Wise Blood, who also stars. The clip is complete with this slightly upsetting YouTube comment: "this is possible only in usa(maybe). in my country he is a walking dead, he is already a corpse."

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After releasing a 7-inch in 2010 and a 17-minute EP in 2011, Wise Blood seemed to have spiraled into oblivion. Over a span of six months in 2012, the Pittsburgh artist with a hard-to-categorize style of junky sample collage and slightly deranged talk-singing tweeted only his first name: "chris." Music-wise, it was basically radio silence until a few weeks ago, when he reemerged in a teaser video holding a baby while Dog the Bounty Hunter chased himself, screaming. Now we've got the full story: Wise Blood's debut LP id comes out June 25th via Dovecote. Hear its first track, "Rat"—not sure whether the rat king he sings of is a hallucinated character, real subterranean freak or Wise Blood himself—and read a short email interview about where he's been, and how he's feeling now.

Stream: Wise Blood, "Rat"

On August 11, 2012, you posted a Vanessa Carlton video to your Twitter then disappeared for seven months. Can you explain? I worked one night for this "party service" and I drove these girls around to parties that had hired them. They would basically flirt/strip with these gross dudes. They listened to "White Houses" like fucking 20 times throughout the night all while railing lines in the van on the way to the next spot. They made me watch the video too, it was hilarious. So I posted that and then suffered from a ton anxiety cause I realized I could never post anything better ever again, I eventually got over it.

Where are you right now? I'm in Pittsburgh, I'm staring at my phone, I'm laying on the ground. People are walking their dogs around me. They look unhappy but their dogs are loving life. Meeting up up with my friend Christian soon (shout out to him, he took the cover photo) going to a VIA event later (shout out to them, best crew in Pittsburgh).

Can you use a photo to describe how you're feeling right now?

The caption for the picture is "All Day/All Night" (I'm the Cheetah). That picture is what I feel like and what the album sounds like.

Stream: Wise Blood, “Rat”