Tom Morello is an unstoppable force right now. In the past six months alone, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist has collaborated with Pussy Riot, Dennis DeYoung, The Pretty Reckless and Serj Tankian, and now rap-rocker K.Flay is the latest artist to benefit from his unorthodox guitar skills.
New single TGIF, which you can hear below, is fueled by K.Flay’s sleazy bend-based Jazzmaster riff, while Morellian Whammy pitch-bends lend extra edge to the chorus. Of course, there’s a guitar solo, too, whose none-more-glitched-out tones chime with Morello’s latest pedal squeeze and DigiTech cult classic, the XP-300 Space Station.
“The song came together in this amazing way, from me writing alone in my studio, to working with Tommy English and JT Daly (my longtime collaborators) on production, to asking Tom Morello to record the guitars and rip a solo,” says K.Flay.
“The word I kept using during the process was DEMENTED. I wanted the track to feel demented, unhinged, insane.”
To capture that vibe, it seems Morello went somewhat avant-garde with his recording techniques, revealing on Instagram that “this guitar solo I threw down on our latest collab was recorded on VM [voicemail] on my phone”.
K.Flay discussed working with Morello in an interview with Guitar World last month, where she enthused, “What so many people love about Tom, what I love about Tom, is how liberated and original he is. He is unpredictable and endlessly fascinating as a guitar player, in my opinion. So, it was so cool to experience that.
“The only thing I said was, ‘Do your thing, as unhinged and as experimental you feel like getting.’ And I think the second half of his solo is one of my favorite things Tom has done.”
The track is set to appear on K.Flay’s new EP, Inside Voices, which arrives on June 11, and also features another serial collaborator, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.
K.Flay previously worked with Morello on Lucky One, which featured on Morello’s 2018 solo album, The Atlas Underground.
