It took Robert Plant a quarter century and several collaborators to completely uproot his reputation as a proto-metal figurehead and reinvent himself as a GRAMMY-winning alt-country musician. For Great Grandpa songwriter Al Menne the sonic transformation wasn’t quite as dramatic, yet the time span between their band’s own foray into alt-country—by way of swelling, bleacher-reaching Midwest-emo—with their broadly appealing 2019 sophomore release Four of Arrows and Menne’s considerably more folk-focused solo debut is still impressively streamlined by comparison.
There’s plenty of familiar fragments of Menne’s previous work on Freak Accident, yet the scope is significantly narrowed—as if trading in the feature-film scope of Arrows for a series of equally lived-in short stories. The theme of these stories, as Menne has shared in press releases leading up to the record’s release last week, is broadly derived from spending so much time behind the wheel of a vehicle that there should be some regulation in place against it, it’s title coming from a reality that’s a distinct possibility at any given moment regardless of yours or your fellow commuters’ awareness of it.
And while all of this makes for a lovely metaphor for any of life’s sudden tragedies, driving can also be taken very literally as an influence Menne looked to while constructing these nine songs. “I feel that no matter where I’m deriving inspiration [from], it generally feels subconscious until I pinpoint where it’s coming from and can allow myself to dive a little deeper on it,” Menne shares with us before diving into the five non-musical influences that most directly affected the record’s conception (short stories made the cut, too, naturally). Check out the album here, and read on for all of their picks.
Relationship advice podcasts
I feel like the podcasts I listen to really inform the way I interact with and process the world. I also learned the word “eudaemonic” (in careful heart) from listening.
Driving
I often will listen [to music while driving] until I’ve exhausted my ears. It’s usually in the breaks between listening that my idea gears start turning. Sometimes I’ll stop a song or story to voice-memo an idea out, because whatever I’m on is giving me ideas.
Tethering friendships
I’d say the majority of [the connections I made through music] were pretty organic—meeting a friend of a friend who becomes a close pal, etc. I think working with friends can either bring you closer together or really tell you something bigger about the relationship, for better or worse. Collaborating is very intimate for me.
Evergreen forests and scents of childhood
I try to return home [to Washington state] as often as I can, every few months or so. I was just back for a few weeks earlier in September. It’s oddly equally comforting and eerie to visit a place you know so well and see the familiarity underneath the major changes. I got to go to my grandparents’ house on the Olympic Peninsula, which is always a highlight—it still smells the same as it did when I was a little kid. I don’t usually write during those trips because I generally plan too many things in a short amount of time. I’m sure the trips inform my writing in some way, but it has yet to reveal itself to me.
Short stories collections (including After the Quake by Haruki Murakami, No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, and Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor)
I mostly just enjoy reading short stories collections because I often lose focus on longer books and it takes me a long time to finish them. I need the gratification of finishing something quickly. I also enjoy the art of saying what you need to say in a concise, compact version. That’s what feels fun about writing lyrics to me—figuring out the puzzle pieces of what I want to say and how I can best get that across in so few words.
