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The Retrographer, Issue 103 ("Country Life in America"& “Talkin’ French”)

The Retrographer, Issue 103 ("Country Life in America"& “Talkin’ French”)

July 12, 2023

Announcing my second album, “Country Life in America”, and its first single “Talkin’ French”!

The Retrographer, Issue 103 (June, 2 0 2 3)

Bulletins:

My new album, Country Life in America, is out September 15th, 2023. Pre-order the vinyl LP here.
Listen to its first single, “Talkin’ French”, on any streaming service now.
Pre-save the album here.
Follow me on Spotify, Audiomack, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud.
Still got your best songs of June right here.

The story of “Country Life in America” and “Talkin’ French”

STREAM “TALKIN FRENCH” HERE AND PRE-ORDER THE LP HEREThat’s me in September, 2013 in my childhood bedroom. I’m sitting on my brother’s bed. I’m holding my sister’s guitar. I’d moved away from home eight months earlier and started a band in New York where I played the songs I wrote there. As far as I know, the only people who ever heard that music were the friends who I played with or who came to our shows.

Today, nearly ten years later, I want you to hear them. I’m so proud to announce my second album: “Country Life in America”, the first release on my new label Glamour Gowns. It’s in some ways a lost album, made up of the songs I wrote then, and the ones in the same vein that came after. I’m releasing my first single, “Talkin’ French”, today, available on all streaming services. Listen to it here. Please pre-order the record, out September 15th 2023, right here.

My wife’s first language is French and I’ve always felt comfortable as the Gomez to her Morticia. But I’d never written a love song in my life for fear of making something unworthy. It seemed too hard to make something I felt was both a deserving dedication and decidedly not corny.

And then, one afternoon, this chorus came to me. It's bendy and dunderheaded, but kind of funny and endearingly so. I felt like the narrator of “Up On Cripple Creek”: smitten and pleased as punch.

A week later I came up with the verse while out on a walk, and it had another quality: lithe, vertiginous, pretty. They just seemed to work together, they felt like the two of us walking down the street: Elegant and goofy, arm in arm. And yet it felt like something was missing; it was too short, too sweet, too uncomplicated. It needed something else but nothing availed itself to me so I packed it away.

“Talkin’ French” was the last song I had to finish before recording the album and I knew I needed a bridge. It was late January, 2022 and, though I had COVID, I was running out of time before my recording dates. I started hammering away on the piano and guitar, demoing no fewer than 20 ideas for the bridge. Nothing came to me. The 21st idea stuck and I thought I was there until, in a practice run, I made an error. I meant to end it on an Fm chord and, misplacing my fingers, accidentally played a Bb2. That error stuck and changed the whole complexion of the song, made it grand and transformative. The sweetness was now lit by awe.

It’s hard to explain why exactly, but the feeling of that chord freed me. It made me feel something bigger than myself, helped me get over my sheepishness about writing a love song for the love of my life. It was the feeling of being overcome by emotion, psychedelic in its potency.

It made me remember visiting her when she was studying abroad in Paris. It was my first time traveling alone. I made it to Charles De Gaulle airport and navigated the subway to the neighborhood where we had rented a studio apartment for the week. I remember finding my way up the narrow staircase, opening the door, and holding her in my arms again for the first time in what had felt like forever.

Recording this song, I had the idea that I could hit that Bb2 chord and then let Winston Cook-Wilson play in free time to try to capture the boundlessness of love. His playing stopped me cold. It felt like being flung out briefly into the exosphere, floating weightless in the stellar firmament for just a few moments before gravity takes hold again. It’s very simply one of the best performances I’ve had on one of my songs and I’m so proud to have it here.

No longer worried about how it may come off: Love changed my life. It remains inexplicable to me, but the most profound moments I’ve experienced are those when I’ve felt I’ve come close. I won’t lie, but I can’t explain what I really mean.

“Talkin’ French” features Andrew Daly Frank on bass and lead guitar, Pat Kelly on drums, Winston Cook-Wilson on piano, and Jason Burger on percussion. It was produced, along with the rest of the album, by Ian Wayne, co-engineered by Nico Hedley, mixed by Nate Mendelsohn, and mastered by Carl Saff. The beautiful cover art is by Jules Evens.