Faith Eliott - "there's a cargo ship full of luxury cars on fire in the atlantic ocean"
Photo by Flannery O'Kafka
Faith Eliott was raised in Minneapolis before moving to Scotland when they were thirteen. Their latest single, "there's a cargo ship full of luxury cars on fire in the atlantic ocean," is an amazing five and a half minute anti-folk track. It's a ramblin' kind of track that would make Bob Dylan proud, and discusses the modern world of technology in a biting way. It's funny as long as you don't think about it too deeply, and once you do it becomes sad. (Not the part about the luxury cars burning, but how overwhelming modern life can be.) The line about diagnosing yourself with ADHD with memes hit me a little extra hard. Faith Eliott has something extra special with this one, and I'll definitely be spending the rest of the week diving into their back catalog.
Faith Elliot says of their latest single:
“This was originally recorded to be on ‘dryas’ but when it came to finalising the track order, Robyn Dawson (who produced dryas), Johnny Pictish and I felt like this particular track didn’t really sit in the same world as the other songs, which are more oblique and soft-hearted. Every few years I get an overwhelming urge to write something very direct, sort of in the school of Kimya Dawson or Jeffrey Lewis. It’s kind of like wanting to have a little moment to be an unapologetic angsty guy and just sing ‘I’M OVERWHELMED’ without burying it in a metaphor about the Holocene glacial retreat or an endangered mollusc or something. Quite often, these songs feel pretty ‘of a moment’, like it’s something I need to get out of my system. This one was definitely that – it was written about five years ago and captured a lot of exasperation and post-covid internet fatigue.
“It now feels like it’s a song that is drifting further away from the direction I’m interested in heading musically, and I thought if I don’t release it, I won’t release it! I wanted to give it it’s day and honour the fact that it was a moment and it was work that I did. The song was inspired by a genuine headline (which became the title). It has always been a fun one to play live, getting audiences to sing with me at the end. I imagine a sort of Wickerman closing scene with everyone holding hands and singing ‘lalala’ around a big horrible bonfire of Lamborghinis.”
You can listen to "there's a cargo ship full of luxury cars on fire in the atlantic ocean" below. The single is out now on Lost Map Records, and is available through Bandcamp. For more on Faith Eliott, check out the artist on Instagram and Facebook.
