Rebecca Schiffman finds playful clarity on new single ‘The Mercenary’
Rebecca Schiffman returns with a vibrant new track, ‘The Mercenary,’ ahead of her upcoming album Before The Future, due out July 25, 2025.
Written as part of the Bushwick Book Club—where members pen songs inspired by monthly reading assignments—‘The Mercenary,’ is rooted in Jonathan Ames’s neo-noir thriller You Were Never Really Here. Schiffman, a New York native now based in Los Angeles, infuses the track with digital mallet-style synths, shuffling percussion, and playful melodic flourishes that nod to Cupid & Psyche 85-era Scritti Politti. The result is a buoyant arrangement that offsets the darker themes of the book with levity and brightness.
On the the single, Schiffman shares:
“A friend invited me to join a rare Los Angeles-occurrence of the Bushwick Book Club: a Brooklyn-based group where members not only read a book each month but write a song about it. The chosen book was Jonathan Ames’s neo-noir thriller, ‘You Were Never Really Here.’
“I had already been performing the song solo for a while, and written that sitcom-like chorus guitar riff. The reggae feel was not introduced until the studio, I can’t remember exactly how it came about, but I would guess it was Luke and the rhythm section experimenting.”
‘The Mercenary’ is out now. Before The Future is set for release on July 25, 2025.
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