Prior to releasing his new album The Sale, which drops on November 14 via Transgressive Records, Baltimore musician Julien Chang has shared another single off the album, “Competition’s Friend.” In other news, Chang also recently announced a run of fall US tour dates with labelmates Let’s Eat Grandma. These dates are in addition to his appearance at Pitchfork London in November, as well as a few other UK dates.

Speaking on the track, Julien comments: “Competition’s Friend can be seen as the soundtrack to a last ditch effort to overcome the deadlock of self-alienation: ecstasy against ambivalence. The setting is a world of resumes, interviews, internships, “networks”–in other words, a world of papers in which one is always examining oneself, not really as a “self,” but rather as a symbolic outward-facing figure, of whose virtue and competency someone else must always still be convinced. The song tries to work through these frustrations before coming finally to a fantastic escape: in the last two minutes we reach the ecstatic heights from which such small and detailed self-scrutiny can be overcome, if not forgotten.”

The theme of Julien Chang’s second full-length album THE SALE is not reconciliation but rupture—between self and music, artwork and commodity, memory and reunion. Behind the lustrous sea-like surface of THE SALE, unseen (but not unfelt!) critical currents move. They are moving your way and they are moving you. The name of this oceanographic phenomena is “estrangement” and it is the idea that marks the development of Chang’s music from 2019’s Jules.

Recorded partially in his hometown of Baltimore and partially in his dorm room at Princeton, his new album The Sale is a homegrown effort with Chang playing all instruments, bar the odd exception of a few notable cameos from Baltimore locals, classmates and old friends. “Sale explores the discrepancy between two worlds, a struggle to get comfortable in either one of them, and ultimately an artistic fascination with this very struggle”.

Julien Chang 2022 Tour Dates

11/1/2022 – Washington DC @ Union Stage*
11/2/2022- Philadelphia PA @ The Foundry*
11/4/2022 – New York NY @ Webster Hall*
11/5/2022 – Boston MA @ The Sinclair*
11/8/2022- Bristol @ Crofters Rights
11/10/2022 – Pitchfork London @ Oslo
11/12/2022 – Brighton @ Folklore
11/13/2022 – Manchester @ The Castle

*with Let’s Eat Grandma

Pre-order Sale by Julien Chang HERE