Sy Somebody & Friends of Father John Misty Create New Song 'Zookeeper'

Chicago mainstay Sy Somebody, also known as Casey Meehan (the force behind Chicago Mixtape) has announced an album of his own, Life Is Cruel, Let's Be Friends... to be released in January 31st, 2020. With years in the scene, Casey was able to bring together an impressive range of musicians including David Vandervelde (Father John Misty), Eli Thomson (Father John Misty, Everest), Kaanan Tupper (Jeremy Enigk, The Intelligence), Frank Lenz (Richard Swift, The Weepies, Everest, Pedro The Lion), Mr. Jimmy (Bobby Bare Jr.), Maceo Haymes (The O'My's, Chance the Rapper) and Vivian McConnel (Chance's Social Experiment, Santah) to support this project packed with shimmering songs about how weird it is to be a human. The latest release, Zookeeper, is a plea for escape from a tiring week, which is felt not only through the lyrics but the fuzzy guitar and steady rhythm. It's an exhausted trip to the bar to get away from the pressures of life.

Sy Somebody began with a conversation between Casey Meehan and David Vandervelde backstage at Lollapalooza. Dave had just finished performing with Father John Misty, and introduced Casey to Eli Thomson and they slowly began discussing making a record together. Eventually, Casey began floating demos to Dave. As they recorded Casey flushed out Sy's sound saying, "The demos were the canvas, everyone painted over them, then I painted over that and then we peeled back a bunch of layers in certain spots and painted a little more. Then, slowly this 3 dimensional thing started to appear, like one of those magic eye posters."

Contemplating the mysteries and complexities of the human and cosmic condition prompted Casey to start writing the album as if a mystery person was in control, inspiring him to pick up the moniker of Sy Somebody. On the creative process he says, "I live for moments of brief insanity... It's surprisingly cathartic to pop open the hood of the psyche and poke around at your primal emotions. I've always been fascinated at how closely linked extremely good feelings are to extremely bad feelings. On this album, I wanted to capture the feeling of when an acid trip turns from euphoria to paranoid freak-out." His debut album, Life Is Cruel, Let's Be Friends... is out in January.

Listen to "Zookeeper" here: