“These Are Simply Songs I Love”: Bartees Strange Follows His Own Instincts on ‘Shy Bairns Get Nowt,’ an EP About Love, Legacy, & Becoming

Bartees Strange strips his sound back to its emotional core on ‘Shy Bairns Get Nowt,’ delivering a quietly seismic EP that trades spectacle for sincerity as he reckons with love, legacy, displacement, and the hard-won power of trusting his truest instincts.

Stream: ‘Shy Bairns Get Nowt’ – Bartees Strange

There’s a different kind of heat radiating off Bartees Strange this winter – a quiet, smoldering intensity that doesn’t announce itself so much as seep into your bloodstream.

Released in late October via 4AD, the six-track Shy Bairns Get Nowt feels like a small reckoning disguised as an EP, and nowhere is that transformation more vivid than in its bookends: The brooding opener “BTNY” and the soul-soaked exhale of “Ain’t Nobody Making Me High.”

It’s wild, honestly, to hear how deeply Strange sinks into feeling here. After the artistic maximalism and emotional enormity of Horror – a record that towered over the top of 2025 – these six songs feel unarmored. Human. Tender in their rawness. Each one leans toward the light not by force, but by honesty. And as the year closes, I can’t think of a more powerful note for him to end on.

“BTNY” opens the EP like a low-burning confession, soft and smoky, heavy with remembrance and the weight of all the things we didn’t do for love. His voice stays close to the mic – hushed, aching, but unwavering – as he sifts through lineage, heartbreak, and the echoes that outlive our choices. Are we the ghosts of our parents after all? The question hangs in the air like fog. “The song just feels true,” Strange tells Atwood Magazine. “In my life I’ve had love and I’ve lost it. More than once… But there’s something to the legacy of love in one’s life. Your loves, the love you experienced through your parents, the patterns and traumas associated with it all.”

You can hear that truth in every breath. “BTNY” is gentle, but never light; it burns with the quiet devastation of hindsight – of remembering too late, of longing too much, of carrying emotional inheritances you never signed up for. It’s a stunning beginning, a song that smolders rather than erupts.

You could be the boy
who was full of joy in the old milieu
I could miss the guys,
full of fireflies on second avenue

I think of everything
I didn’t do for lov

This could be another of the mild
ends that we tried to do
Yeah, I miss your brother
and I miss your friends
How they danced with you
Thinking is so hard to have
existence after all
Thinking of the sunlight on the
floor of the wooden hall

But “Ain’t Nobody Making Me High” is where Strange goes full soul man – unfiltered, unguarded, and absolutely glowing. This is the most soulful he’s ever sounded, a modern blues traveler cutting straight to the bone with a voice that charms, churns, and charges all at once. The groove is classic, timeless; his delivery is pure feeling. You can hear every ache, every truth, every hard-earned piece of wisdom.

He wrote it from a deeply personal place: “I wanted to write something about my life. Sort of the story of a modern day, black, rambling man or blues traveler,” he shares. “Felt nice to write something that felt like where I am in this current stage of my life.” And you feel that weight – not heaviness, but maturity. A groundedness. A man taking stock.

Recorded with Hovvdy, Tamara Hope, and Tommy King, the song came together quickly and intuitively. “Horror is very produced and there’s bells and whistles all over it,” Strange says. “This is more direct. It just is what it is. Songs, to the point.” That clarity is the magic: Stripped of production fireworks, Strange lets his voice and writing carry the heat. And they do so, effortlessly.

Put your cards down, on the table
You know I never tell a lie
And I’d change for you, if I could
You know I would
Lay it all down on the line

You know there ain’t nobody making me high
(Nobody, no, no, nobody, no)

I feel two toned, I’m a demon
Had to travel all it’s life
When the Devil went to Georgia
I was right there by his side

That same directness radiates across the rest of Shy Bairns Get Nowt, an EP that reveals its depth not through spectacle, but through emotional precision. “Pigs Fly” cuts with a nervous, unfiltered intensity, its urgency and anger crackling just beneath the surface as Strange confronts violence, power, and exhaustion head-on. “Like This” follows with a tense, confessional immediacy, wrestling with betrayal, survival, and the psychic toll of living in a body and a world that rarely offers rest. These songs do not disrupt the EP’s warmth; they deepen it, acknowledging the weight that tenderness must sometimes carry.

Elsewhere, Strange turns inward, letting longing and displacement speak in quieter tones. “Baltimore (Jack’s Version),” co-produced alongside Jack Antonoff, feels like a hushed inventory of possible lives, its ache unfolding through restraint rather than release. Reworking one of Horror’s most emotionally loaded songs, Strange returns to questions of home, safety, and belonging with even greater tenderness, lingering on lines like “I’m thinking about the lives I could have” as both confession and quiet reckoning. “Fittylite Years” stretches that sense of distance across time itself, tracing grief, alienation, and endurance with a voice that sounds worn but unbroken. Taken together, these tracks frame Shy Bairns Get Nowt as a record about inheritance and becoming – about learning when to sit with pain, when to speak up, and when to simply let a song hold the truth for you.

When I think about places I could live
I wonder if one’s good enough
to raise a few Black kids
Wife’s a city girl, and I’m born from the sticks
No hope for me and mine
We just get it how we live

Philadelphia always shows love
DC’s nice but the summers are tough
New York City, it just costs too much
I’m thinking about the lives I could have

Shy Bairns Get Nowt feels less like an addendum to Horror than a recalibration.

Strange put it simply when he reflected on where he found himself after that record’s release. “I put an album out eight months ago and I was sure it was going to be a big earth-shattering thing,” Strange confides. “When that didn’t happen, I thought, ‘Well, ok. Why did you feel that way?’ Maybe it’s because of how hard I worked on it, or the people I had be part of it, or pictures painted for me by people who I figured knew a lot more than I do. I also liked it. When it didn’t do what I expected I thought, well…?? Do I suck at this? I had to sort of re-meet myself. Ask myself why I made things at all anyways.”

He continues, “I remember when I was in high school, the first time I ever saw my dad cry was at one of my shows. Bricktown Ballroom battle of the bands. I remember when I was working at BerlinRosen, I did everything I possibly could to leave my job at 5:50 and run my ass to band practice. Sweatshop. I remembered being at my grandparents’ house when they were alive and playing “Boomer” in the living room before that was ever a song. Watching my granddad’s bootleg horror movies – Halloween 1, 2, 3… I think somewhere in this journey I forgot that I just like doing this, always will. I’m a bit of a space case, but with songs and music, I’m obsessed.”

“So for this, Shy Bairns Get Nowt, my new EP, these are simply songs I love – songs that put me back inside my body. Made with myself, some repeating freaks, and some new friends. My heart goes to these weird people.”

What ties Shy Bairns Get Nowt together is what it represents for Strange. This music wasn’t meant to sit on a hard drive; it was meant to signal a shift.

“I’ve always taken the advice of people in the industry on what a smart release timeline is and all that. With these songs I felt like they had something special in them I hadn’t really done before,” he smiles, “and it felt important to me that they come out sooner rather than later. Maybe to signify that I’m thinking in a new direction already… I just love these songs.”

He’s not hiding the intention: “I think this is the moment in my ‘legacy’ where I transform into something else. Something that’s nothing more and nothing less than who I am. Not perfect, just Bartees. Good enough.” There’s so much beauty in that simplicity. These songs don’t posture or perform. They don’t reach for grandeur. They sound like a man shedding the last traces of expectation and stepping directly into himself.

“BTNY” carries the smoke and the memory; “Ain’t Nobody Making Me High” carries the soul and the swagger. Together, they frame an EP that feels like a turning point – a doorway Strange walks through with softness, strength, and a renewed sense of self. For an artist who began the year confronting inner monsters on Horror, closing it with this kind of warmth feels quietly monumental. Shy Bairns Get Nowt is smaller in scale, but emotionally seismic.

It’s Bartees Strange at his most human. His most honest. His most soulful. A reminder that sometimes the boldest artistic move isn’t the loudest – it’s the truest. If this is the beginning of his next chapter, we’re witnessing a remarkable evolution in real time.

To understand that shift more deeply – and to hear Strange articulate this moment in his own words – we spoke with him about Shy Bairns Get Nowt, legacy, and learning to trust the quieter instincts guiding him forward. Read our conversation below, and step inside a chapter defined less by expectation than by truth.

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:: stream/purchase Shy Bairns Get Nowt here ::

:: connect with Bartees Strange here ::

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“Ain’t Nobody Making Me High” – Bartees Strange

A CONVERSATION WITH BARTEES STRANGE

Bartees Strange: Well – I just wanted to get these out. I’ve always taken the advice of people in the industry on what a smart release timeline is and all that. With these songs I felt like they had something special in them I hadn’t really done before and it felt important to me that they come out sooner rather than later.

Maybe to signify that I’m thinking in a new direction already. Horror was the culmination of so much – I started that record almost four years ago. Before even Farm to Table came out. So, when it came out, I was already trying to figure out what I wanted to make next. I just love these songs.

Bartees Strange: The song just feels true. In my life I’ve had love and I’ve lost it. More than once. I think about the things I did for it and the things I didn’t often. I have more peace around all that now. But there’s something to the legacy of love in one’s life. Your loves, the love you experienced through your parents, the patterns and traumas associated with it all. My buddy Gabe and I wrote this together I think he was coming off a big breakup- powerful tune.

You could be the boy
who was full of joy in the old milieu
I could miss the guys,
full of fireflies on second avenue
I think of everything I didn’t do for love

This could be another of the mild ends that we tried to do
Yeah, I miss your brother and I miss your friends
How they danced with you
Thinking is so hard to have existence after all
Thinking of the sunlight on the floor of the wooden hall

Are we the ghosts of our parents after all?
(I think of everything I didn’t do for love)

Bartees Strange: Hmm, well I wanted to write something about my life. Sort of the story of a modern day, black, rambling man or blues traveler. Felt nice to write something that felt like where I am in this current stage of my life. Largely was pulling from the book of sly stone.

Bartees Strange: I mean it was cool. Hovvdy, Tamara and Tommy are talented people. Came together really fast. Horror is very produced and there’s bells and whistles all over it. This is more direct. It just is what it is. Songs, to the point.

Bartees Strange: I think this is the moment in my “legacy” where I transform into something else. Something that’s nothing more and nothing less than who I am. Not perfect, just Bartees. Good enough.

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:: stream/purchase Shy Bairns Get Nowt here ::

:: connect with Bartees Strange here ::

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 © William Minke

Shy Bairns Get Nowt

an EP by Bartees Strange