Medium Build

The man behind Medium Build, Carpenter has enjoyed a frenzied run over the last couple of years on the buzz of his full-length debut album, Country. Opening slots for Tyler Childers and Lewis Capaldi, headlining tours of his own, loads of critical acclaim and festival slots—it all became a bit much for the songwriter, especially after recording such personal material.

Hot on the heels of the release of an accompanying EP, Marietta, Carpenter is ready to relax, to let down his guard and his creative guardrails in pursuit of new sonic interests. He's not exactly sure where Medium Build is going in the near future, but that's the intent.

Carpenter recently interrupted his time holed up in a studio to tell us about this new chapter and the way the last few pages left him. He's not going Jock Jams but then again...

Analogue: I’d love to start with a quote you put out around the album’s publicity where you said, ‘It’s so easy to get back in touch with yourself if you can throw off the heavy cloak of duty and just do something that feels good.’ I was hoping you could define that.

Nick Carpenter: That's a great pull. I don't even remember saying that, but I love that. It sounds right. It sounds like some shit I would say.

Analogue: Well, in a bio, it can also be hard to tell what’s real or what’s been finessed.

Nick: I'm so intentional about making sure that my words go out, but oftentimes you're backstage and it's like, ‘Hey, we need three paragraphs from you about this thing.’ You're like, ‘Fuck. Okay, do it real quick.’

The heavy cloak of duty. I think what I was on in that context was talking about there's the us that we think we have to be, especially as we grow up and deal with our childhood trauma and move on. Maybe our early twenties or mid-twenties where you're like, ‘I’m going to be this kind of guy.I think I'm going to be tougher than my dad. I'm going to be smarter than my brother. I'm going to be blah, blah, blah.’ You kind of put on his heavy cloak of duty of being this guy. Life does its natural course of breaking you down.

I've found in my thirties that it's been a lot easier to get in touch with my inner child because I've failed as my pretend self. The tough guy thing I wanted to be has failed. It feels a lot easier to tap into, ‘Oh, no, no, no. Remember when I was 12 and just a kid with a list and had no clue how to talk to people?’ I'm actually still him. I'm barely above that.

That was where I was sinking into on the record a lot: dealing with looking back at that kid and being like, ‘Is he happy? Does he like any of this?’ I was in therapy for a couple of years and was dealing with that kind of stuff. I think I enjoyed how good it felt to dig in.

Analogue: When a song comes from that place, do you ever think, ‘Maybe I should just keep this for me’? Or does that never enter the equation?

Nick: No, definitely. It enters the equation more so now than ever. I think when I started Medium Build, the entire point was that it was ‘shit you don't say.’ There was nobody listening, so it was cool. I remember the first year or two, it was just like 50 monthly listeners. And I was just like, ‘Alright, cool.’

This is some shit that you would get checked on if you said it to a doctor. But if I could just say it to Spotify, nobody cares. And now that people are listening and paying attention, I think about two things: I think about singing it in front of my mom, and then I think about singing it to myself every night. I'm like, ‘Is this an emotion I want to live with on stage for the rest of my life if this song ends up being one of the ones that people like a lot?’

I think as I age, Marietta and Country feel like this chapter of me. The Mountain Goats have that record, The Sunset Tree, that's very much about John Darnielle’s childhood. Then on all of the other records, he just writes fiction. It's all fantasy; it's all characters and stuff. I think I'm ready to tap into some characters and get the hell out of Nick's head for a little bit. Let him be. Stop poking him.

Analogue: I love that band and even his fictional work like Wolf in White Van and other stuff. Have they been a touchpoint for you for a while?

Nick: Yeah, somebody gave them to me when I was 18 when I first moved to Alaska. A punk kid that was living in the hostel with us was like, ‘The only thing you need to know is the Mountain Goats.’ It was like the Shins in Garden State where he pulls the headphones off him and puts them on me and presses play on “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” and I was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is the shit.’

Analogue: So what is this new chapter?

Nick: Right now I'm in this era where the heat has cooled down. I'm not on every festival this year. We did every festival last year. It was fucking mind-numbing. The Bonnaroo line-up came out today, and I love that I'm not involved. All the year-end lists came out, and I was barely on any of them. I was like, ‘This is awesome! I'm leaving the zeitgeist.’

I'm getting to go back to being myself. I’m in the studio all this month. I'm just writing. I'm having fun. There’s no pressure. There’s no big song that I need to defend. No one really knows who I am. It’s kind of sick.

I'm definitely trying to take some bigger risks, sonically. The lyrics are always going to be weird or journal entry-ish or maybe too literal. I’ll still show up in the pen. Sonically, I'm like, ‘Let's swing! Let's scare some people. Let's bring some new people in.’ I just built a studio in my house this year while I was on tour this is the first week I've ever spent uninterrupted.

This sounds so corny, and I don't know how this will come across in press, but after touring Country all year, I love my band… I want some more fun songs in the set. I do want some party tunes. I don't really know exactly where that line is. It's like, ‘Do you want a Sugar Ray song or are you happy going to a James Taylor “Mexico”? Is it fun because the chords are happy or the content is happy? Is it fun because it's up-tempo and it's challenging to play?

I'm still trying to find that edge. I'm trying to speed up tunes. I'm just leaning into faster BPMs. I'm trying to find some riffs. What if this song is just kind of sick before I even have a lyrical concept? Let's just put on a fast drum beat and then just play a guitar riff, and then I'll see what happens.

I’m trying to paint myself into corners where the songs are more interesting. A medium-low song starts with 60 BPM and two chords and I'm just kind of moaning. It works out if we find something emotive, but what if it's just kind of popping from the beginning? It takes two minutes where you're like, ‘What the fuck is he talking about? That’s a weird lyric. He's screaming now.’ It’s kind of slow and cinematic, and then eventually you get to the payoff of me yelling. I don't want to yell as much. I kind of want it to fucking dance.

I don’t know what I want to make, but I don't want to make a whole record of just dance tunes. I want to steal from a lot of people's dance stuff. I love Nine Inch Nails, but I don't need to make a whole Nine Inch Nails record. I just want to have a two-minute industrial jam. I’m not going to make a full disco record, but I do want to have a disco tune.

We've got the ballads. We've got the emo. We’ve got the Country tenderness. Can we just have a couple? I feel like a lot of bands have to have gotten there. We've seen arcs of bands getting there. Paramore is one. They had records of serious and then they had that rebrand in 2015 or whatever where they were like, ‘Let’s fucking have some fun Talking Heads-type of songs.’ They did it and they nailed it.

I'm fully there but I don't know if anyone wants to follow me. If you're into me because of “Crying Over U” or “Cuz of U”, maybe you don’t want your folk-y guy to take you to the disco, but we'll see. [Laughs]

Analogue: At least it won't be a full Jock Jams album is what you're saying though. [Laughs]

Nick: No, but don't be scared. Jock Jams is a big cultural touchstone for me. We’ll pump up the jam a little bit.

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