Having just authored the definitive guide on how to write your own bio and then five days later getting a piece he wrote published in the New York Times, it seemed only fitting that this week’s update is guest-written by the brilliant Adam Schatz. We just added in some hyperlinks and corrected the typos. Please enjoy!
Landlady’s newest album is called “Landlady”, and it could not arrive at a better time! That’s because Landlady’s chief songwriter and executive director Adam Schatz has absolutely no other work at the moment, so he can put his full body-weight into promoting the new album, their self-determined most mature album to date that continues to tackle the evergreen topics of loss, joy, and the cosmic anchor that can be latched onto by a seemingly simple act of playing in a band.
“Landlady” the album is a capture of the magic that can come from a seasoned band who loves to play, the happy accidents and the successful attempts that can occur from collective arranging, improvisation, and the occasional mind reading. Schatz wrote the songs and brought them to the band to have their way with during a week-long recording retreat at the Outlier Inn in Sullivan County, NY. Engineered by Schatz’s longtime recording partner Jake Aron (Grizzly Bear, Snail Mail, Jamie Lidell), the sounds on this album are truly next level, raw and exploratory, surprising and visceral. Landlady the band values their dynamics and “Landlady” the album proves that’s not just a bunch of baloney.
When not playing with each other the members of Landlady stay plenty busy, too busy in fact, with Schatz on tour with Sylvan Esso and Wye Oak, or recording on recent albums from This Is The Kit, Japanese Breakfast, and Becca Mancari. Drummer Ian Chang is a member of Son Lux and has been working recently with Moses Sumney, guitarist Will Graefe is a member of Okkervil River, and bassist Ryan Dugre often plays with Rubblebucket and Eleanor Friedberger, to name a few!
But that’s what it takes to survive in this day and age where songs are free and yet you still can’t and won’t quit, and this is surely an album about survival. On tour in 2017, during the tail end of a seventeen-hour long drive during a downpour from Seattle to San Francisco, the Landlady minivan hit a puddle in the middle of a highway during the climax of the song “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger. The van spun 180 degrees but remained upright, thanks to boxes and boxes of merch. Landlady lives to play another day, and this album is the result of what happens with their powers combined.
