White Lung will soon be no more, but they’re going out with a bang: Today, they’ve shared another taste of their forthcoming final album Premonition with the pummeling single “If You’re Gone.”
Vocalist Mish Barber-Way has become a mother two times over since White Lung’s last album Paradise, and she’s explained that Premonition deals with topics of birth and evolution. But “If You’re Gone” focuses on the rebirth that happens when a loved one — particularly one who raised you — is no longer with you.
“Suicide was in the zeitgeist in many ways when I wrote this song,” Barber-Way said in a press release. “At the time, a few prominent public figures had killed themselves and they all had children. I was thinking about postpartum depression and how real it can hit. The song is about the emotions of children when their parent is now gone and how they deal with that loss. It also looks at the struggle parents face when life gets so bad one doesn’t see another way but to end it.”
The lyrics of “If You’re Gone” cut right to the chase: “Someday they’ll try to survive/ They’ll wonder why you’re not alive,” Barber-Way sings, as Anne-Marie Vassiliou’s breakneck drums and Kenneth William’s beefy chords rage on behind her. Listen to White Lung’s “If You’re Gone” below.
White Lung have also previously teased the Premonition singles “Date Night” and “Tomorrow.”