Image Credit: Roger Kisby/Getty Images
R&B “It” boy Frank Ocean is not slowing down.
The man who dropped the summer’s must-album Channel Orange on our unsuspecting heads and lent both Saturday Night Live and John Mayer some cool points earlier this month is diving into the week head first. Following his I’ll Be Your Mirror appearance this weekend, Ocean played a mesmerizing set at New York’s Angel Orensanz Center, the antebellum synagogue where Fader and Vitamainwater held a joint event last night. Bon Iver was technically the headliner, but Ocean seemed to inspire the most excitement, prompting fans to crowd the Gothic Revival building’s delicate balconies for a better view of the night’s headbanded hero.
They were not disappointed. Backed by a Telecaster-wielding band, the singer obligingly launched into spacey Channel Orange favorites like “Crack Rock” and “Bad Religion” (interesting, given the setting) as well as earlier mixtape cuts, like the winding “American Wedding.” He ended his hourish-long run with the seedy Egyptology of “Pyramids,” and it all felt like the weirdly correct way to spend a night in a temple during the Jewish High Holidays.
One song Ocean didn’t play last night? “Blue Whale,” the brand new track he debuted this morning on his Tumblr. It’s a lo-fi number, characteristically mellow and introspective with lines like, “I wasn’t much into the type that my bros liked/So I never really had no wife/And that’s alright.”
Give “Blue Whale” and listen below:
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