Listen to Algiers' New Song, 'Cleveland,' About Tamir Rice and Police Violence

Atlanta’s dystopian experimentalists Algiers dropped a new song last week that caught our ears here at Scene. It’s called “Cleveland,” which confirms once again that our city’s name is synonymous with both pro sports tragicomedies and rampant police violence and racism. Residents here and abroad would do well not to forget our little dichotomy.

The tune revolves around a soulful nod to breakbeat and an almost Gothic atmosphere. Spanish moss hangs low in this song.

“A recurring theme in our music is the idea of injustice and the bitter understanding that obtaining justice in this world is all but impossible–particularly for black and brown people,” Franklin James Fisher said in a statement. “I wanted the song to sound like the Final Judgement in the Bible, wherein the wicked are judged and condemned by the righteous with all the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth,’ of the damned when justice is finally realized.”

A sample of the song’s punk-wail lyrics: “…Here come them boys in black and white / With the kerosene / It’s been the same evil power since in ‘63 / They hang in Homewood, Alabama with the whitest sheets // And in Montgomery County, Maryland from a sapling tree / But innocence is alive and it’s coming back one day…”

Algiers’ new album, The Underside of Power, comes out this Friday.