Madi Diaz reveals the final pre-release single/video, “Resentment,” from her forthcoming album, History Of A Feeling, out 27th August via ANTI-, and announces a 2021 tour. Diaz has released a string of powerful singles, and today’s “Resentment” is resonant and heartbreakingly honest. The song, written by Diaz, Wrabel, and Jamie Floyd, originally appeared on Kesha’s last album and featured Sturgill Simpson and Brian Wilson. In Diaz’s version of the song, the rawness of the emotional reaction she is singing about matches the recording – stripped back to only vocals and guitar: “I don’t hate you babe it’s worse than that // Cause you hurt me and I’m more than sad // I’ve been building up this thing for months // Resentment.” The accompanying video directed by $ECK at the Four Lane Auto Salvage in Nashville picks up where the video for “New Person, Old Place” left off. Diaz wanders around the junkyard, letting her emotions out on the surrounding wreckage.
“It felt completely and strangely cathartic walking around ruin and wreckage in the salvage yard making the ‘Resentment’ video,” says Diaz. “It was somehow representative of all the feelings I’ve let sit and rot and rust, probably becoming more hazardous with time and neglect. It was almost a kind of joyful act smashing up cars like maybe I was crushing and compounding my own resentments. Basically it’s cheap therapy and I highly recommend it. I loved making this video and I think $ECK has such a beautiful eye…somehow he made poetry out of something pretty brutal.”
History Of A Feeling undeniably marks Diaz’s status as a first-rate songwriter, a craft she’s spent years refining. Across the album, she cycles through the full spectrum of emotions of coming to terms with the dissolution of a meaningful relationship. She plays the line between the personal and the general with dexterity: in Diaz’s hands, quiet moments of self-pity are transformed into grand meditations on heartbreak, and unwieldy knots of big existential feelings are smoothed out with a sense of clear-eyed precision.
The seedlings of History Of A Feeling first sprouted three years ago, before beginning collaborations with co-producer Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver). Pulling from a range of folk, country and pop leanings, as much influenced by Patty Griffin and Lori McKenna as PJ Harvey and Kathleen Hanna, History Of A Feeling is comprised of the most direct and introspective songs Diaz has ever written. Throughout, she seamlessly weaves a profound sense of intimacy and camaraderie as her lyrics are relatable to anyone who has experienced heartbreak and great change in some manner. These universals are shaded by the fact that the relationship breakdown Diaz is chronicling coincided with her former partner transitioning, a complex reckoning Diaz approaches with empathy, candor, and care.
