Premiere: Listen: Farao Previews Debut EP With ‘Tell A Lie’

Earlier this year, Kari Jahnsen aka Farao shared the first of two, heart-wrenching tracks written about the same subject.

‘Skin’ was half Fleet Foxes wooziness, half determined giant that’d hold its ground against just about anybody. The second offering had a lot to live up to.

DIY’s delighted to be able to share ‘Tell A Lie’, a gently lifting number that becomes something colossal by its end.

‘I remember it was really late one night and I couldn’t sleep, I was sitting on my bed trying to write something really simple and repetitive to make me tired,’ recounts Kari to DIY.

‘The song came out and I woke up the next morning with it still in my head.’

It’s no wonder. This doesn’t so much sneak into the headspace as lodge itself into the very centre. Stream ‘Tell A Lie’ - as premiered on DIY - and read our interview with Farao below:



This song builds from scratch, into something much, much bigger. What was the intention there?
I wanted a hypnotic feel to the song, and the slow build up contributes to that. The drums and guitars are looped to make it quite repetitive and static, and the bass is just playing the same note for the first minute and a half. It makes it feel so much better when it loosens up towards the end.

It sounds very delicate, overall. Like a lovely vase that could smash at any point. Is there a link between that and the emotions that went into writing the song?
The song is about dishonesty, and the moment of realisation when you find out that someone you thought you could trust has actually been lying to you the whole time. I guess you can compare that to a vase smashing. It’s not just broken from that moment on, you also find out that this whole time it was faulty with a huge crack in it.

Was it written at the same time as ‘Skin’ or does it come from a very different frame of mind?
Both of those songs are actually about the same person. The two songs are from different perspectives though, ‘Skin’ is more like: ‘You’re an idiot for doing this to me’ and ‘Tell A Lie’ is more like ‘I’m an idiot for letting you do this to me.’

‘Tell A Lie’ is taken from a self-titled debut EP, due out in 2014. It’s released as a single on 4th November.