The pretty bleak and brutal worldview of “Wandering Star” and “The Morris Column” and the rest of the first side-culminating in an unforgiving dawn-gives way to a side two that, if it doesn’t exactly offer a light at the end of the tunnel, at least senses a faint glow up ahead. The years off had constituted a time in which I thought I was finished as a musician they were time characterized by the loss of several musician friends to suicide both acute and de-facto, and by consideration of the cost of “working the art muscle.” I was approaching a familiar sort of life crossroads which I’ve traditionally addressed on the principle of “blow it all up and see if that fixes things.” My previous album had ended with an image of endless, repetitive cycling this one sees a way forward (“I am another now and not the same/I shall not pass this way again”). I assembled most of the material in April 2020 and recorded in spring 2021.

But the combination of working on new Hold Steady material, writing my second book, and having unexpected time on my hands like everyone else in spring 2020 eventually primed the pump for a record’s worth (including a co-write with my THS bandmate Steve Selvidge). For several years after my last record, I needed a break, and actively tried to keep from writing songs.

Franz nicolay