Nikki Lane – “First High” (Prod. Josh Homme)

The veteran alt-country singer-songwriter Nikki Lane hasn’t released an album since 2017’s Highway Queen, but she’s been showing up on this site a lot lately thanks to her association with Lana Del Rey. (Lane co-wrote Del Rey’s song “Breaking Up Slowly,” and they performed together at the Stagecoach Festival last month.) Today, Lane has announced a new album called Denim & Diamonds, which she recorded with Queens Of Stone Age leader Josh Homme producing.

Denim & Diamonds is the first thing we’ve heard from the Josh Homme camp since his nasty 2021 custody battle with his ex-wife, the Distillers’ Brody Dalle, which included multiple abuse allegations, restraining orders, and a community-service sentence for Dalle. For Denim & Diamonds, Homme helped put together an all-star backing band for Lane, which includes Queens Of The Stone Age members Alain Johannes, Dean Fertita, and Michael Shuman, as well as Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders, Autolux’s Carla Azar, and Lane’s regular pedal steel player Matthew Pynn.

First single “First High” is a bittersweet rocker about remembering your first taste of rebellious freedom and longing to recapture that feeling. Lane says that the song is “about chasing that feeling of the first roller coaster, the first drag of a cigarette, that first kiss.” Homme and his bandmates don’t appear in the video. Instead, director Jocelyn Cooper shows Lane and friends partying in a dive bar and going skinny dipping. Below, check out the video and the Denim & Diamonds tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “First High”
02 “Denim & Diamonds”
03 “Faded”
04 “Born Tough”
05 “Try Harder”
06 “Good Enough”
07 “Live/Love”
08 “Black Widow”
09 “Pass It Down”
10 “Chimayo”

Denim & Diamonds is out 9/23 on New West Records.