Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – “When The Truth Is…”

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – “When The Truth Is…”

Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Batmanglij are putting out their first collaborative album, I Had A Dream That You Were Mine, next month, and today they’ve shared another song from it — this one’s a shuffling, yearning, oldies-inspired doo-wop number called “When The Truth Is…,” and it follows on the heels of “A 1000 Times,” “In A Black Out, and “Sick As A Dog.” Here’s what the two collaborators had to say about the conception of the track:

“This beat was initially inspired by The-Dream’s demo for the song ‘1+1’ by Beyonce…that demo was never released but you can find it kicking around online. It got me thinking about how much I wanted to make a 6/8 song that really smacked. Hamilton came up with the “would you listen to me now” section the day I played him the beat. A couple weeks later I recorded the slide guitar solo…and pretty quickly we had all these finished sounding sections of a song…still it took about 18 months of passing ideas back and forth both online and in the studio to finish the thing.”
– Rostam

“I had watched the Muscle Shoals documentary the week before Rostam played me the original beat, and I was really jazzed up on all those soul singers. Percy Sledge, Wilson Picket, and Aretha Franklin (to name just a few) used to just belt it out with their hearts on their sleeves. I wanted to try and imitate them like Mick Jagger used to (or basically any other British singer from the 60’s). The combination of doo-wap, hip hop (groove), and soul was definitely a curveball. This song brought our record into a very different arena, and I’m glad for that.”
– Hamilton

Listen below.

I Had A Dream That You Were Mine is out 9/23 via Glassnote. The vinyl for the record will be out a week early (9/16) — pre-order that here.

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