By Shea Roney

Al Menne’s new release, Freak Accident, flowered by sweet folk songs and warm melodies, is a patient reflection of life’s in-between moments while trying to regain a sturdy ground. In preparation for this release, I got the opportunity to chat with Menne about balancing pain with humor, collaborating with friends, and redefining what matters most. 

Menne’s impressive voice and songwriting was first shown in the years spent fronting the Seattle-based rock band, Great Grandpa, but with his debut solo record, Freak Accident, Menne takes a softer and more personal approach to telling stories.

With a star studded lineup of friends helping to put together this piece of work, Menne’s performances are only heightened by the company. Produced by good friend Christian Lee Hutson and engineered and mixed by Melina Duterte (Jay Som), Menne was able to find comfort in the tedious process that is making an album. “It came with its challenges and awkward moments. But, overall, it was just pals working on something, which is fun.” Menne tells me. Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) also offers some guitar work, bringing a full sound to the track “Grandma’s Garden.”

“Grandma’s Garden” is a nostalgic account of Menne’s time growing up and being a kid running through the mud in his grandma’s garden. The mood begins to shift as Menne brings up the pressures of unmet familial expectations as he came more into his identity. “Am I not who you thought I would be?” he sings. A heavy topic, but its warm flavor sticks to your bones with every listen. Being a fan of juxtaposition, Menne tells me that he enjoys when songs are “kind of devastating, but it sounds like summer, and I guess I could roll the windows down and listen to this, and either be joyful or cry haha!”

The first single that Menne released, “Kill Me,” finds him singing, “do you remember saying it scared you to death to know how much I love you?”, taking the pre-chorus to meander on this thought. This utterance can sit roughly in the gut or even bring comfort to a broken heart, but either way, still makes you bob your head in blissful indulgence. With a somber and memorable line, Menne is able to make the echo of “Kill Me” sound just as comforting as “I love you.” Taking a direct quote from a friend, Menne says “kill me can either be taken as like ‘Jesus, just fucking kill me’ or the way that I intentionally wrote it was ‘alright, if it’s gonna scare me so much to know how much you love me just fucking kill me! Tell me, tell me how much you love me!’”

Humor, often dark, is used as a processor throughout the album. Menne recounts “most people that I know process their darkest and most fucked up feelings or experiences through a little bit of levity, and making light of things, or being self-deprecating.” With little one liners hidden all throughout the album, Menne says, “I think it’s important to inject a little bit of humor, no matter if it’s gonna be read by every audience member.” He continues, “I think a lot of the things that I found humorous in the writing could be taken very seriously, and at the same time, take on a new meaning for somebody else, which I think is fun.” Whether it be the self-deprecation that comes from labeling yourself a ‘freak accident’ on the title track or the subtlety of telling someone you love to kill you, Menne’s humor isn’t standardized, but it does a lot of the heavy lifting. 

The track “Beth” is a whispery story that can only be told through someone at the heart of empathy. As one of the last singles released before the full album, “Beth” exposes Menne’s range of style and songwriting in the most delicate way possible. As a song that tells the story of two people very close to Menne, it comes with its fragility and anxiety. “I ran it by one of the people involved,” Menne tells me, “And she said ‘I love it, but also, fuck you for making me cry’” he laughs. With a melody that breaks your heart, there is something so personal that comes from this performance. The soft whispery vocals at the forefront of the track wrings out the intimacy right into our lap. 

As the album reaches its closure, Menne takes a meditative shift into personal growth. “Feeling/Meaning,” a track barely scraping a minute, finds Menne and Hutson singing, “you don’t have to give it meaning/just lay into the feeling/someday it’s all gonna be/water under something.” With an album that focuses so intently on doubt, stability, and strenuous reflection, Menne knows where he needs to go. “Feeling/Meaning was kind of the bridge from all of the devastating songs,” Menne expresses. “One day, it’s not gonna be something so intense to you.”

Closing out the album, the track “Careful Heart” is, as plainly put, a love song. With the chorus “do you want to build a life with me?” Menne takes the pressure off himself to be a little corny. Having begun to date his partner halfway through the making of the album, Menne says, “I think it was definitely a testament to not only how our relationship was affecting me positively, but just my state of mind really shifted at that point. I was coming into my identity a little bit more and it felt like I was really being seen by the person that I love.”

With an album that at times can feel full of doubt, there is a resolution that comes with “Careful Heart” that admirably tells the whole story of recovery and stability.