Kimosabè

About

“I feel like this record is everything I’ve been working towards,” DOPE LEMON—Angus Stone—tells Apple Music of his fourth album. “It felt right to unveil something more personal this time around. I’ve decided to pull the curtains down and allow myself to be seen.” <i>Kimosabè</i> is his first record under that moniker to show his unobscured face, which Stone has said reflects the more personal content this time. Stone taps into personal nostalgia (“Just You & Me”), beachside bliss (“Miami Baby,” “Give Me That Fire”), and more, while honing a supremely laidback indie-rock sound. He also shares some treasured pop-culture references, naming the album after a line from the 2008 comedy <i>Step Brothers</i>—which he samples on the opening title track—and quotes both <i>Almost Famous</i> and <i>Fargo</i> on “Golden God.” Stone’s raspy drawl often dips into a half-spoken, half-sung delivery, adding to the persistent vibe of a cool, amiable hang. Below, Stone talks through each track on the album. <b>“Kimosabè”</b> “’Kimosabè’ originated from one of my favorite comedic pairs, John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell. It came from one of their classic films, <i>Step Brothers</i>: ‘No way, Kimosabè.’ To sum up the meaning—I guess when we’re supernovas burning bright, riding a good vibration energy-wise, it’s about not letting any negative entities in, and steering clear of those people and patterns, so the fuel in our blasters can get us to the good-times high we’re looking for.” <b>“Derby Raceway”</b> “‘Derby Raceway’ is a fleeting glimpse into a love story. It represents a time I fell in love in Colorado. It’s a song about a window into a time that I had with someone really special. In the verses, it goes into different branches of things that were happening around that time. Basically, seeing windows into different people’s lives. Each line is a story for a different character I passed on the street.” <b>“Golden God”</b> “It’s almost looking into my future self, living out my last days in an old shack by the sea, living free and still writing away like an old sailor telling his stories. It’s sort of a conglomerate of all the things that I collect along the way—the seashells of poetry we put in our pockets on our stroll through life. The chorus goes into something completely different, talking about how you can only love someone who feels they deserve love, and only to a certain point if they want to run free. Then, there’s a time when you’ve got to let the horses run free and that’s just life. In the end, we all have to follow what feels right in the way of the heart.” <b>“Miami Baby”</b> “We came up with this concept when we were up late, kicking back some whiskey in the studio at Sugarcane Mountain. It’s cool when the riff can be the catalyst for the whole song and it all just follows, the river flows downstream nicely. I wanted to imagine this story as someone who’d been locked up, and they had a postcard of this place—Miami—in their mind, and this was their way to escape. ‘Miami Baby’ is about that person daydreaming away to a better place with sunshine and cold drinks on the beach with friends and lovers.” <b>“Just You & Me”</b> “This one is a true story from when I was younger. I remember a moment, sitting on the beach late at night, probably drinking Passion Pop and feeling euphoric. I was having a conversation with my little lover, saying, ‘One day we won’t have to be here anymore, we’ll get out of this place, just you and me.’ It sums up my being young and starry-eyed, leaving a small town, taking the open highway around the world, wanting to explore the universe with music and make it all a real thing. I feel like this song is a manifestation of my story up to now.” <b>“Blue Mood Fox”</b> “If you were dabbling in the benefits of psychedelics, this song would be where you walk into a ballroom of euphoria with big crystal chandeliers and people dressed up as foxes and wild animals of the night, falling into the blue moon together and following the rabbit all the way down to its mystical secret lair to answer to the universe.” <b>“Broke Down Casino” (feat. Sloan Peterson)</b> “‘Broke Down Casino’ is a lost-in-the-desert sort of haze of love, where you see the mirage of what you wanted with someone, but in the end it’s just a broken-down casino. You still keep returning and losing all your chips. I guess it’s that sort of potent love we all sometimes crave but, in the end, won’t be the mirage we foresaw. I guess there’s euphoria in the heartache, though. It’s about being a lovesick fool and not continuing to place bets at the table of love roulette.” <b>“Slinging Dimes”</b> “This is my huckleberry storytelling song: drifting down the river with a big bear, drinking moonshine and watching the moonlight hit the water. It’s about feeling the moment, feeling good and feeling alive.” <b>“Give Me That Fire”</b> “It’s that drippy-honey, hot-summer-night sort of love song. Getting that late-night call to go to an old diner, getting a vanilla shake, sweet romance, smoking and talking for hours under a neon sign.” <b>“Lemon Tree”</b> “‘Lemon Tree’ is like a revealing of the curtain. It sort of arcs and sums up the record as a whole. It’s sort of like being lost in a death walk in a desert storm, running out of water, knocking on hell’s bell. Seeing the mirage of a lemon tree and all the ghosts that come out to play when you hit certain levels of meeting the boss at the end of the game. It’s the grand finale where you might meet game over, but it could also be the beginning of it all leveling up.”

via Apple Music