Song of the Day: Foxygen - How Can You Really

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, selected by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is “How Can You Really” by Foxygen from the 2014 album ...And Star Power on Jagjaguwar.

Foxygen - How Can You Really (MP3)

Pulling from their psychedelic and classic rock influences with a reverent-yet-ragged approach, Westlake Village, California's Foxygen broke out of their local scene at an early age and have only gotten more fascinatingly explosive since then. Founders Jonathan Rado and Sam France began writing and recording together at an early age, allegedly recording over a dozen albums' worth of material by the time they finished high school, and began self-releasing EPs of material around the time of their graduation. In 2011, producer Richard Swift encountered the band on tour in New York and subsequently produced their second album, 2012's Take The Kids Off Broadway. Swift stayed onboard for their next LP, 2013's We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, which launched a chaotic album cycle for the band which included rave reviews, a fiery showing at SXSW 2013, and a series of headline-making events regarding the band's volatile performances. After a relatively quiet period, Rado and France reemerged this spring with a slew of new songs that eventually paved the way for their fourth, and most ambitious album, ...And Star Power. (Curiously, Star Power is the name of Sam France's solo album that was pulled from the internet as part of the alleged internal turmoil.) A double album where the band adopted alter egos reframing Foxygen as a punk band and enlisted a large amount of their musical compatriots (members of the Flaming Lips, Of Montreal, White Fence, and Bleached) for guest spots.

"How Can You Really", the album's first single, has plenty of the hallmarks from a '70s FM anthem – backing singers on the chorus, soft melodies in the verses, and a rush-to-the-finish conclusion – but France's warped vocals and the muted production flip those elements from being something familiar to something intriguingly dissonant. Across the song's three-and-a-half minutes, there isn't a dramatic shift in dynamics and barely a climax, so when France nonchalantly sings "How can you really love someone who can't love you/How can you love someone you can't leave/It's my fault, it's your fault too/How 'bout you go and find somebody who can love you", it comes off as subtly cutting. It's easy to peg Foxygen as overly ambitious, retro-crazed kids – sincerely requesting Paul McCartney to play drums on a song certainly doesn't help – but they're smarter than that, and "How Can You Really" shows that by adopting the drive for ingenuity that produced the songs that they loved, rather than the songs themselves, Foxygen may outlive their destructive youth yet.

Foxygen came through Seattle in support of ...And Star Power this summer, but if they return, that news will be posted on their page at the Jagjaguwar website and their Facebook. Below, watch the band play "How Can You Really" live on KEXP this July.