While ODESZA has long been capable of making a lot of glorious noise, the Seattle-based duo have barely made a sound since wrapping their massive A Moment Apart Tour in July of 2019.
That silence ends Tuesday (Feb. 8) with the group’s first new music in nearly four years.
The duo — Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight — are returning with “The Last Goodbye” a sleek, propulsive stunner featuring powerhouse vocals from iconic blues and soul vocalist Bettye LaVette. The guys were inspired to make the track after hearing LaVette’s simmering 1965 classic “Let Me Down Easy,” from which they sampled the singer’s lovelorn vocals, chopping and layering them into a dark-edged, but ultimately contemplative, body-moving anthem about mortality, collective loss and the vital importance of love, community, family and friendship.
“Over the past two years, we’ve had a lot of time to reflect on ourselves and what’s important,” the duo tells Billboard in a joint statement. “We found that our families, our friendships, and how we impact the ones we love to be paramount. We’ve thought about the mortality of those around us, and our own mortality — in a way we haven’t had to before.”
“Our track ‘The Last Goodbye’ featuring Bettye LaVette hopes to touch on many of these themes by bridging the past and present and putting forth the question, is there every really a last goodbye? We came to find comfort in the idea that those close to us stay with us. Within ourselves and forever echoing out throughout our lives.”
Mills and Knight haven’t been entirely silent in the last four years, with the duo releasing a collaborative album with Australian producer Golden Features under the name Bronson in 2020. In 2021, ODESZA’s Foreign Family Collective Label partnered with the venerable Ninja Tune imprint in an arrangement under which Ninja Tune handles the global release, promotion and distribution of the entire Foreign Family Collective catalog. (“The Last Goodbye” is out via Ninja Tune and Foreign Family Collective.)
Also released by these two labels, the duo’s third studio album, 2017’s A Moment Apart, hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and ultimately spent 10 weeks on the chart. The LP was nominated for best/dance electronic album award at the 2018 Grammys.
Listen to “The Last Goodbye” below: