I suppose it’s strange to come back from a year of no new releases with something like Amateurs. But I like metaphors, and if this next cycle of music was a long, romantic meal, this could be the apératif. Simple, small, and stimulating. It’s an honest reflection of where I’ve been, which is alone. Despite a deep need for company and a natural instinct for social life, this year has been my most solitary, most of it spent somewhere quiet inside. In part to seek inner strength, in truth so that no one else had to deal with me. I turned back to songwriting as the only way out of myself. Though my songs are often theatrical, wearing masks and aiming to entertain, my heart wasn’t up for putting on a show when I wrote these. Play My Guitar and Hangover were written about a year apart, both on a late winter morning only a few moments after waking. In some ways, they’re swan songs for past love. But it was in August, while my body floated along the Rockaway shores, that a thought struck me unprompted—the ocean tends to do this! Though I was trying to focus on one puzzle, one person, the current pulled me elsewhere. It was as simple as treading water and noticing life on the shore. I saw that all around me people were fucking up and letting each other down. I became overwhelmed by my disappointment and astounded by all our difference. That confusion turned inwards and I felt unknown to myself, too. How could I make sense of all this effort and all this failure? In one word, spit out by the mouth of the ocean herself, we were amateurs. As if on our knees, taking the silt from the earth around us and shaping it frantically into a self to inhabit. We reach out for warm bodies in total darkness. The water told me all this. It was terrifying and a great relief. Solitude has isolated me in some ways, but now I imagine better that the clumsy orchestra practicing their symphony in my head might sound a lot like yours. Amateurs is about becoming human to one another again. Not to pull out etymology on you all but to my delight, the word comes from the latin amator which is lover, and amare which is to love. I hope these two songs feel like love to you, they are my best practice at it.

… and I hope it whet’s your appetite for what is to come.