Other You

Steve Gunn thought he was ready to begin recording his sixth solo LP in early 2020. “In retrospect,” the Brooklyn singer-songwriter tells Apple Music, “I wasn’t. I was trying to force it.” As the pandemic scuttled all plans to record and tour, he began “immersing” himself in his demos, refining his work, trading ideas with longtime collaborator Justin Tripp, a key player on 2014’s *Way Out Weather*. “It was transformative,” Gunn says of the experience, which saw him embrace writing on piano and classical guitar. “We talked a lot about how we wanted to make the music more melodic, to give the music more space, to not overdo it, to let the songs live and breathe in a more simple way. I think I cracked through a certain shell of myself or something. I just calmed down.” You can certainly hear that in *Other You*, an iridescent set of bottomless folk and gentle rock that Gunn eventually recorded in a bubble, in LA, with producer Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck, Guided By Voices) later that year. It’s a record that’s rooted in empathy, in stepping outside of yourself. And following the loss of a close friend to COVID in the early stages of the pandemic, it came at a crucial moment for Gunn. “It was a shock,” he says of his friend’s death. “I went through a really hard time in the beginning. But I did a lot of work to pull myself out of it, really relying on this record, on the process of making it. It was a real letting-go period for me—I started accepting a lot of things and I started feeling a lot better. Partially, I think that’s what it’s about.” Here, Gunn tells us the stories behind some of the album’s songs. **“Other You”** “I was doing a lot of harmonizing, which was new to me. I couldn’t get this one note and Rob was trying to help me, playing the note on the piano. He opened this program and replicated my voice to sing the note, and he played it back to me through headphones. It was pretty incredible—it was me, but it sounded like a robot. He was like, ‘Do you hear that? Sing to that. Sing to the other you.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God. The other you: That’s the title of the record.’ It just made so much sense. That’s essentially what the song is—finding a different space, different sorts of inspirations, a different sound.” **“Fulton”** “Walking is very important to me, in particular when I was writing this record. I was wandering around my neighborhood, thinking about the people that are near and dear to me, how supportive they’ve been, and how sometimes joy and happiness can be just tapping you on the shoulder. I was thinking of me, shutting down and sitting in silence, letting a lot of things go, releasing a lot of stuff that I was holding onto really tightly. There was a particular moment that I reference in the song where I was listening to news radio, and the station just shut off. It represented what I’d been trying to achieve in enjoying silence and realizing how powerful that can be.” **“Circuit Rider”** “I came up with this riff, and it’s circular—goes backwards and then it goes the other way. It’s a reel or, in modern terms, a loop. It came from a British folk style that I learned how to play a lot of and, lyrically, I feel like we’re living in a time of real science fiction. I was trying to write a song from the perspective of a cyborg, the circuit rider, who’s observing someone in modern times, who’s in a current situation, and being super distraught as they’re observing. I feel like there are a lot of detriments to the way that people interact and socialize, and the way that people perceive reality and ego. It’s dangerous territory. I was imagining this creaky robot telling us, ‘You don’t have to submit yourself to this.’” **“Protection”** “In 2019, I was all over the world, and I just came back completely empty, feeling like I needed a break to figure out a lot of things in my life. I was thinking about how you can rely on a lighthouse to get back to where you’re going if you’re lost. It’s a hopeful song about trying to find your path and it’s not just about myself—it’s an empathetic song for others as well. And I have to say, it coincided with the heightened level of anxiety that we’ve been in—how unprotected we’ve all felt. There’s a new sense of vulnerability with everything.” **“Reflection”** “Originally, it was just this super-simple piano thing, and it helped me sing differently, in a more emphatic way, and really use my voice. I was thinking a lot about Robert Wyatt: It almost sounds like he’s visualizing certain things, playing these chords, almost doing some free-associative language. He’s very playful with his words, and it almost feels like he’s being spontaneous as he’s composing. I just did this off-the-cuff, in a style that, perhaps, Robert Wyatt would. It feels really free and not precious. It paints a picture.” **“Ever Feel That Way”** “There was this incident that happened in Atlanta—this young man, Rayshard Brooks, was murdered by the police. I was so heartbroken to read about it. He basically asked them for help. He was driving home to see his family, and he was drunk in a parking lot, trying to sober up. There’s this Tibetan exercise called Tonglen, which is where you sit and meditate and you think about others—the people you love, but also everyone that’s surrounding you and what they’re going through. This guy, he just needed a little bit of help. I was thinking about him, and turning it back on the cop to say, ‘Hey, man. Have you ever felt this way? You definitely have.’ I was just trying to convey the fact that I’ve certainly been there, and everyone I know has been there. Everyone needs help.”

Recorded in Los Angeles, the songwriter and guitarist’s sixth solo album is ambitious yet effortless. Even his lead guitar seems almost to melt away into the delicate arrangements.

Celebrated guitar alchemist Steve Gunn finds his voice on the profoundly beautiful Other You

On his sixth solo release Brooklyn's Steve Gunn pairs a sun-dappled West Coast feel with moving poetic ruminations, resulting in his most relaxed and confident effort to date.

Steve Gunn’s journey across the landscapes of America hits the West Coast on this bucolic, engrossing song cycle. A record that finds the guitarist

The guitarist’s immaculate playing is beyond doubt, but his latest solo work is a little too meandering

Other You album by Steve Gunn album review by Greg Walker. The singer/songwriter's LP comes out on August 27, via Matador Records