On "Bleached Yellow," an eerie and beautiful new single from the songwriter Teague Cullen's project Foot Ox, Cullen continues to dance on the edge of emotional storytelling and surreal, sun-drenched folk experimentation. The track is a thrilling introduction to "A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes," the long-awaited new album from Foot Ox, Cullen's project that feels simultaneously more weighty and open-hearted than anything Cullen has released previously.
A product of the lush Phoenix-Tempe DIY scene that brought us AJJ, Roar, iji, and Stephen Steinbrink, Foot Ox has always borne a recognizable emotional tone, part diary entry, part desert mirage. But "Bleached Yellow" expands that signature sound to widescreen proportions, with a lush new instrumental palette that swaps the project's trademark solo cello for a whole string section and a quietly devastating pedal steel. Recorded and mixed by David J at Los Angeles' Balboa Recording Studio, the song is a testament to the joys of mutualism and progress.
It's a slow burn, quietly unfurling over smoothing textures and aching melodies. Cullen's voice, brittle, throaty, otherworldly, sits gently above the instruments, like a memory you're not yet ready to let go of. It works well with the strange allure of emotional burnout, how certain people and places keep pulling you back in, even when you're about to check out. There's a striking melancholy here, but also a gentle resilience, a hush of a promise that even in burnout, something tender is left alive.