Oh He Dead Detail New Album and Tour; Share First Single 'Strange Love'
“Strange Love” is one of the new songs Oh He Dead performs on their Audiotree performance, which is available to watch now.
By: Josh Sharpe Jun. 27, 2024
DC-based indie soul band Oh He Dead has detailed the arrival of their eagerly anticipated third studio album, Ugly, due via their own Wally Baba Records on Friday, August 23. Pre-orders are available now.
The “shadow side” and follow-up to last year’s acclaimed Pretty, Ugly is heralded by the release of the album’s provocative first single, “Strange Love,” available everywhere now. A blast of technicolor on a wave of sultry synths, the track is told from the POV of a sex worker who has fallen in love with her john.
“My favorite artists are still Sade, Kings of Leon, and Stevie Nicks,” says Oh He Dead frontwoman CJ Johnson. “Combined they have the rasp, the sexiness, and the storytelling. That is what I aim to be myself: a raspy, sexy, storyteller.”
“Strange Love” is one of the new songs Oh He Dead performs on their Audiotree performance. The appearance also features two other songs off of the soon-to-be-released Ugly: “Is It My Love,” and “The Foreigner.” Audiotree called the performance “a firecracker explosion of euphoric pop, the likes of which you’ve never seen.”
Hailed by The Washington Post for their “infectious and soulful sound,” Oh He Dead will celebrate the impending arrival of Ugly with a busy live schedule that includes headline shows, festival appearances, and dates alongside The Dip. Highlights include a special hometown album release event set for Washington, DC’s The Atlantis on Friday, August 23. For complete details and ticket information, please visit www.ohhedead.com.
Tracklist:
John Song
Tell Me (Feat. The Honeynut Horns)
Is It My Love
Two Days
Strange Love
Amore Strano*
Artemis
Moonshine
The Foreigner
Every Last Trail
Cover Me
* Vinyl Only
OH HE DEAD - TOUR 2024
JUNE
21 – Greenfield, MA - Green River Festival *
22 – Wichita, KS - Elsewhere Fest & Conference *
29 — Pittsburgh, PA - WYEP Summer Music Festival
JULY
6 — Washington, DC - Kennedy Center
AUGUST
7 – Lewes, DE - Lewes Ferry Grounds †
8 – Lancaster, PA - Tellus 360 †
23 – Washington, DC - The Atlantis ^
* Festival Appearance
† w/ The Dip
^ Ugly Album Release Event
The origins of Oh He Dead run deep, forged from the years-long relationship between frontwoman CJ Johnson and manager/collaborator Claire Newbegin which started when the latter taught Johnson in high school history and musical theater. “Whether as Rizzo in Grease or Maureen in Rent, she was just a forcefield,” Newbegin says. “By the time she graduated, I’m pretty sure the whole school knew she was going to be a rock star of sorts.”
Oh He Dead rounded out over the ensuing years, adding Alex Salser (guitar), Adam Ashforth (drums), Piano Whitman (keys), John Daise (bass), and Colin Sidley (bass). The band officially broke through in 2018 after recording the groovy “Lonely Sometimes” at Salser’s studio, The Lily Pad, located in a converted barn in the wilds of Virginia. After submitting the video to NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, the track went viral, attracting fans far afield of their beloved DC. Their self-titled debut album followed that same year, introducing the band with several songs Johnson wrote while still in high school.
The close-knit crew developed further by playing live as often as possible, winning over audiences across the country with their contagious joy and Johnson’s powerful voice and on-stage presence. Pretty arrived in 2023, earning national acclaim for a soulful approach that fuses pain and joy into a sound as smooth and lux as leather, but also rich with levity like a feather in flight. Those same contrasts and contradictions that fuel their music are perhaps best summed up by the origin of the band’s distinctive moniker. When asked what happened to a cheating boy who was shot by his lover in a song of hers, Johnson responded bluntly, “Oh, he dead.”
A suite of songs that encompasses everything from death to new love, Ugly now acts as a kind of foil to the poppy, polished Pretty, more akin to what Johnson describes as “your insides – whatever you write in your journal at 4:00 a.m. Homemade, raw, acoustic, sexy and messy.” Mixed and mastered by Jimmy Mansfield, the album was a true labor of love, recorded over late nights in Salser’s barn studio, where the band tweaked and twisted songs to their formidable will. From the bombastic “Tell Me” (featuring The Honeynut Horns) and the slinky, ominous “Two Days” to the driving “Moonshine,” brassy, warm-hearted “Is It My Love,” and inner blues of the album-closing “Cover Me,” Ugly sees Oh He Dead visiting upon yin and yang, birth and death, beauty and ugliness, somehow straddling opposing worlds yet somehow keeping its feet moving until gravity wins out.
“Ugly is not meant to be just sad,” CJ Johnson says. “All the songs are about the beauty of the darkness that leads to more light.”
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