Now he is back with “Shards”, featuring NINA, aka Nina Cristante, also one third of bar italia. The pairing makes a lot of sense considering how naturally both artists gravitate towards music that feels intimate, blurry and slightly difficult to pin down. Over Santella’s jangly, surprisingly catchy production, Cristante sounds both wounded and completely ready for revenge, moving from jealousy and obsessive memories into something much more destructive. “Shapeshifting so you can’t foresee me,” they sing early on, before the repeated “I hope you see me” starts to feel less like a plea and more like a threat. Attraction, resentment and destruction are all tangled together here.

For the video, they fittingly play with altered footage from Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while Angelina Jolie also appears on the artwork, borrowing some of the movie’s glamorous lovers at war energy.

And considering “Shards” arrives so soon after Deer Park’s collaboration with Valeria Litvakov, we cannot help wondering if all these new songs are leading towards something bigger. Nothing has been announced yet, but there is definitely enough movement around the project to make us curious.