Fresh off his first overseas tour dates in a long time, Jesse Malin is back stateside this month celebrating a double-album and quietly urging the world to get back to normal, along with the rest of us.
Malin's new album, Sad and Beautiful World, with its 18 tracks is a good bit heftier than his prior solo efforts. But while the NYC punk-turned-singer-songwriter had a lot on his mind over the last year, he tells Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke that the density of the new record is a consequence of the time he had to make it, not the apparent surplus of tragedies in the news.
"It just seemed to make a lot of sense with everything we've been through — it isn't a COVID album or anything like that. But it was made a lot during the lockdown in pieces when we could get to the studio in New York and written a lot in my kitchen," he explained. "We ended up having a lot more songs because we had a lot more time."
While there are certainly dark moments on the new album, Malin suggests the record is ultimately a hopeful one about finding balance and peace amid hard times.
"You can't make a record without [considering what is] outside your door," he confessed. "I'm listening out my window and there's fire trucks and ambulances and people banging pots."
Check out the full conversation via the player above, including Malin and guitarist Derek Cruz's rendition of Tom Petty's "Crawling Back to You."
For more information on Malin's Sad and Beautiful World, go here.
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1 of 2 Photo: Ilaria Conte
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Watch the official music video for "State of the Art" via the player below: