TIM HEIDECKER: Ballad Of ICE Agent Ray

 

Today, Tim Heidecker releases the Another Year In Hell: Collected Songs from 2018 EP via Jagjaguwar, the follow up to 2016’s acclaimed Too Dumb For Suicide: Tim Heidecker’s Trump Songs. He also shares a lyric video for “Ballad of ICE Agent Ray,” edited by Vic Berger and stylized with a still of Trump’s twitter and his comically characteristic misspellings.

Featuring six songs that are caustic renderings of MAGA characters, both imagined and real, Another Year In Hell boasts the same signature piano and guitar lines from Heidecker’s previous release, but with a sharper bite. While Too Dumb For Suicide made us question when we should stop laughing at our current administration’s incompetence, this release reckons with the disasters that occur at the intersection of stupidity and TimHeidecker-AnotherYearInHellcruelty. Heidecker marries the absurd to everyday horrors, building a distinctly contemporary hellscape throughout. Two years into the administration, we should know what we’re laughing at.

“It was another year in Hell,” says Heidecker. “And while it didn’t generate the number of songs the year before did, I’m glad to have these songs I’ve released throughout the year in one handy package. And for the first time you can hear a new orchestration of ‘Tobin and the Judge’ by Bobby Halverson. This song really only showed up on YouTube as a backstage live recording so I’m so glad there’s an official and quite beautiful version of it now. Also new to most everyone’s ears is:  ‘Rake the Floor’ which I wrote for Father John Misty’s Wildfire Relief Fundraiser.  Please enjoy!”