Based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Footings is an indie rock band revolving around songwriter and guitarist Eric Gagne. Alongside multi-instrumentalist Elisabeth Fuchsia and a revolving cast of musicians that has included members of Pile, Bunny’s a Swine, Dweller on the Threshold and Rick Rude, Gagne creates songs via a process fluid collaboration. Ideas and demos are sent to the other members of the group, who add their own elements and pass them back, an ongoing process pursued until the track begins to feel complete. “We sort of attack the whole thing together,” Gagne explains:
and it grows and changes as everyone interacts with it. Writing this album, as with anything, is just a facet of a physical manifestation of our values and experiences […] the recording process gives everyone space and time to stretch out and try things. Every single song in its final iteration has parts that I never envisioned, or could never have imagined. So that process is always super collaborative.
This month sees the release of Annihilation, the latest Footings album out via Trailing Twelve Records, as well as a physical vinyl release thanks to a partnership between Feeding Tube Records, Sophomore Lounge and Don’t Live Like Me. Inspired by Alex Garland’s film of the same name, the record riffs not only on the destructive connotations of the title, but also the themes of the work. Ideas which happen to align with the Footings creative sensibility. The characters in Garland’s film are shaped towards some final form by the events and environments of the narrative, just as Gagne’s songs are gradually made whole as they are processed through the various members of the project.
Recent singles have revealed what this might sound like, from the richly impassioned noise of ‘Tornado’ to the moody country rock of ‘Later Days’. But giving a glimpse into a different style, ‘Lottery’ highlights the folkier side of the Footings sound. A simple strummed guitar line holding together the reflective, thoughtful delivery, drums arriving every so often to promise some take-off that is never quite realised. The result is wistful in the way all dreams are—the kind of fond sadness derived from imagining good things that could never possibly be.
Why can’t I just win the lottery
not like the one in that Shirley Jackson story
I’ll pay the taxes and not bitch about it
it doesn’t matter anyway,
cause I’m rich without it
Annihilation is out on the 30th July via Trailing Twelve Records, and on physical vinyl LP through collaboration with Feeding Tube Records, Sophomore Lounge and Don’t Live Like Me. You can pre-order it from Bandcamp.
Artwork by Zadie Gagne, Photograph by Elisabeth Fuchsia