When Aaron Frazer released his first solo album Introducing… in January of 2021, times were drastically different for musicians. He was on a break from his longtime band Durand Jones & The Indications, and most of the country was still observing COVID-safety lockdowns that forced everyone to slow down.
“My first solo album, it was super cool to put it out at a time when there wasn’t actually a ton of other music coming out — and so it spent a lot of time in the spotlight,” says Frazer of the 2021 album, which was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Since then, Frazer has released two Indication albums and a second solo set — and, today, he releases his 6-track EP Corners via Dead Oceans.
Frazer — whose musical output has included inspiration from soul, R&B, funk, disco and hip-hop — is prolific when it comes to putting out music, but wanted to slow things down for his latest collection, which taps deeper into the rhythmic roots of the 1960s and 1970s.
“My initial plan was just to put out 12 singles — because I feel a certain level of, I guess, frustration that when you look at album streams, and you take away the singles, you see a linear decline from the first song to the last song,” he explains. “People don’t finish albums, and the stuff that I put on the at the end of albums, I don’t put it there because it’s my least favorite.”
So, Corners is a quick 19-minute collection of songs that any soul-loving crate digger would be ecstatic to find on dusty 45s at a used record store. Lead by singles “It’s a Shame,” a groovy slow-jam, and the call-and-response ballad “Paint a Picture,” the EP is an experiment in releasing independent music in the ever-evolving streaming era. “That’s the other thing that’s so hard about trying to tweak any sort of formula – there is no control group. Every single variable is changing all the time,” Frazer says.
But the one thing he chose not to tweak was the sound. While his other projects have traveled through genres, Corners doubles down on the genre he knows best. Much like the most recent Indications album, 2025’s Flowers, the new EP takes a step back from modern flourishes and seeps itself in simplicity and sincerity of soul’s past.
“Rather than always pushing into a new chapter, I wanted to go deep and see if I can put the lessons that happen through this iterative process of an album cycle, apply them to the thing that is at the core of what I do, which is late 60s into 70s soul music,” Frazer says. “It’s like how people say, ‘It takes a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.’ You start, and you have this totally free sense of exploration, and then you learn, and then you’re like, ‘Oh God,’ and then you’re in a box for a while. Then you can come out the other side and realize you can make simple choices and the simple things can be elegant.”
Adding to his soul music entrenchment, Frazer has been stylizing the visuals for Corners based on the same time period. Frazer, who is the first to admit he’s never been a dancer, worked alongside director and choreographer Camryn Eakes on all three of the music videos for the album, even taking one-on-one dance lessons with Eakes to nail the routines.
“I’ve spent my entire musical life on my butt,” jokes Frazer, who is predominantly a drummer. “Soul culture is super laid back. It not super high energy. There’s an aloofness sometimes, so to be vulnerable and do a box step or whatever, it’s something that has been missing. It’s nice to fill in some of the corners of this chapter of soul music that aren’t being addressed.”
For the videos, he took inspiration from The Hy Lit Show, a nationally syndicated dance show that Frazer refers to as a “public access version of Soul Train.” Eakes and Frazer watched troves of the old videos to get everything down from the splotches of light, the attire, the 1970s tube cameras and even some of the obvious lip-synching.
“I’ve spent a decade watching these videos, and then all of a sudden, I’m in one, which is fun,” says Frazer. “It’s not avant-garde, pushing art into like new territories. I’m just a student, and I love to learn.”
Aaron Frazer’s Corners EP is out today via Dead Oceans.
