Styrofoam Winos – “Next Thing”

The Nashville country-rock trio Styrofoam Winos are beloved by figures like MJ Lenderman and Bonnie "Prince" Billy and me. When the group announced their new album Any River last month, they released "Pearls," a delightful, propulsive tune sung by Lou Turner. "Next Thing," the next thing the Winos are sharing from the record, is helmed by Joe Kenkel. It's like what Tom Petty might write if he were a pensive rootsy indie singer-songwriter type.

Here's what Kenkel has to say about it:

A couple summers ago, I was listening to bluegrassy things and picking a lot of chromatic guitar lines over simple chords – at some point, I stumbled on the 'Next Thing' chorus guitar lick, which became the seed of the song. The song came to life pretty much immediately when we tried jamming it for the first time as a full-band and found that it sounded really great uptempo, with a good bit of romp to it.

Lyrics came later and were influenced by the song form we'd landed on. The hard-stop between the verse and chorus sounded like someone patting you on the back, being like, "okay, now that you got all that off your chest… are you ready to move on to the next thing?"

We had some fun discoveries in the studio with this one. The original plan was to lead this one with an electric guitar, but we found that doubling it with a finger-picked acoustic gave it an unexpected boost. Also, the decision to add the repetitive, "the really really really real world," in the bridge was a late call, which ended up being strangely satisfying to sing in three part harmony.

Listen below.

Any River is out 6/19 on Dear Life.