Growing up in the “greed is good” era of Reaganomics, AIDS, the war on drugs, and MTV, TW Walsh, like many Gen-Xers, sees many parallels to our current time of Trump, deregulation, rising populism and the renewal of the Cold War that was still going strong throughout the ’80s. Echoing our existential anxiety, Walsh — who has worked previously with Pedro the Lion, Headphones and the Soft Drugs and is presently with Lo Tom — frames his new album Terrible Freedom as a meditation on fear and liberation, space and time, and the self and the mind.
Walsh tells PopMatters that “it’s tough to talk about this record, because it seems like it happened on its own. I just got out of the way. I don’t even really remember making it, to be honest. It came quickly and was easy to make, but feels like it took lifetimes of preparation. It’s a clear, direct, unimpeded expression. I don’t think I could have made a different record. This is the only possible record. I hope you love it and forget it immediately. It’s dangerous.”
TW Walsh’s Terrible Freedom releases this Friday via Tower of Song Records.