Rostam Previews New Album ‘Changephobia’ With ‘4Runner’

Rostam is heralding the release of Changephobia, out June 4th, with the new single “4Runner.”

The song drops Tuesday along with a video featuring a camera view of a moving vehicle speeding down highways through sunrise and sunset. “‘4Runner’ captures the intimate thrill of a road trip with someone special,” Rostam said of the track in a release. “A 12-string acoustic guitar and booming percussion match the sunshine and breeze of a drive across the West Coast, a queer love story unfolding alongside it. Isolated from the outside by car doors and a blaring stereo, they experience the euphoric aura of the sun and wind from within a world that is theirs alone.”

Changephobia follows Rostam’s 2017 solo debut Half-Light. It was made while Rostam co-produced Haim’s Women in Music Pt. III and Clairo’s Immunity. “4Runner” follows the singles “These Kids We Knew” and ” “Unfold You.”

“A few years ago I met a stranger on a park bench, somehow I found myself opening up to him, revealing recent changes in my life that had altered its course, and he said, ‘Change is good. Go with it,’” Rostam said of the album. “I realized that I had never heard that sentiment expressed before. Transphobia, biphobia, homophobia — these words hold a weight of threat, and it occurred to me that the threats they bare — the fears they describe — are rooted in a fear of change: a fear of the unknown, of a future that is not yet familiar, one in which there is a change of traditions, definitions, and distributions of power.”

“So gender, too, was on my mind while creating this album, as I came to find myself writing about love and connection but not wanting to place relationships in a gendered context,” he added. “This collection of songs is not celebrating a fear of change. Rather, it’s the opposite. It’s about who we are capable of becoming if we recognize these fears in ourselves and rise above them.”

Changephobia will be released on various colors of vinyl and formats; you can preorder it here.