Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra Share 'Justice For The Dead' Ahead Of Friday's LP Release

Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra will release their fifth album, Did You Do The Thing We Talked About? this Friday, February 16.

The quartet writes music steeped in 20th-century American traditions—jazz, folk, country, blues, and rock—but tackles modern subjects with urgency, humor, and a well of deep feeling. Today, they share the final single before the album's release with "Justice for the Dead." 

In addition to four studio albums, Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra created the musicals No Place to Go and The Outer Space. "Justice for the Dead" is from a play of Ethan's called Tumacho. In the play, a famous gunslinger is trying to explain to the woman who killed his son that he won't be seeking revenge against her.

“Personally, I've always been a bit revenge curious,” says Ethan of the track. “By that I mean I can empathize with the feeling that hurting someone else might ease my own pain.  And there's a part of me that wishes revenge produced more positive outcomes, that it actually made the world a better place.  But the evidence doesn't seem to bear that out.  And so, in the end, I vote against revenge.  It makes me feel like a child every time I think it through, so I think I gravitated toward using imagery that might speak to a child in the song.”

"Justice for the Dead" follows the LP's heartfelt opening track "Talking To Bonnie" and "Mess That Summer", the latter accompanied by a video starring Alex Borstein from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra has been a band since 2005 and features Eben Levy (guitar), Ian Riggs (standup bass), Vito Dieterle (sax), and Ethan on vocals. Ethan writes the songs and the quartet arranges them via telepathy and Doritos. It all adds up to a cockeyed view of an odd, disjointed age.

The band has played venues including SF Jazz, Celebrate Brooklyn, MASS MoCA, the Flynn Center, The Green Music Center, Arts Emerson, Dublin's Pavilion, the Gate in London, The Troubadour, Theatre de la Ville, Pitchfork Paris, and ATP.

Photo Credit: David Goddard