Growing up in Cavendish, Vermont, Matt Lorenz began playing piano at age five, and later took up violin, saxophone, and guitar. “Jesus! King of the Dinosaurs” is a romp poking fun at extremists and biblical timelines. “Can’t Look Away” protests the overuse of a planet. “Light a Candle” is the simmering doom of lost love. “ And Then There Was Fire” finds Lorenz reflecting on current events, inspired by the destructive wildfire in Australia, which seems like three years ago at this point, but took place right at the end of last year and beginning of this year. “Black Holes and Overdoses” riffs off the unrelenting news cycle, the numbness that wants for oblivion. The End is New is an artist expanding his possibilities, collaborating, matching his lyrical power over eleven tracks with the epic sounds and narratives of his imagination. I think the writing on this album is some of the best I’ve ever done and the production has them sounding huge and cinematic.” I’m so very excited to share these new songs. J Mascis made a ripping appearance on ‘Light a Candle’ and Steve Berlin slipped off his producer shoes and laid down some horn parts. We polished off the record bit by bit in the following months, recording overdubs from home with no more studio time to be had. Justin, the sound engineer and co- owner of Sonelab, and I had spent time together in the same studio so we figured if one of us had The Virus we probably both did so why not finish the record as safely as we could? So we watched as the world drastically changed around our little musical haven, unsure of what lay ahead. We plugged along, track by track, occasionally commenting on how crazy everything was feeling. The bicoastal, remotely produced recording process was bizarre and frustrating but fruitful. Steve Berlin, producer extraordinaire, was stuck at home on the West Coast under a newly imposed lockdown and here in Massachusetts the virus was starting to heat up. “We had done some tracking in February and felt that we had a good start,” says Lorenz, “but things had gotten a bit strange. In the strangest of ironies, the production of this album, an artist moving from solitude to collaboration, went forward in a time when Lorenz, Berlin, all their studio musicians, and the entire world were in isolation for the lockdown of pandemic. There’s a heavy mix of hope and desperation in the sound and lyrically I was trying to be a mirror to society using truth, myth, confessions and stories.” Neither of us knew quite what that meant at the time, but I think we found out with The End is New. “That’s what I’d started calling my music when people asked. “I told Steve I wanted to make a doom-folk record,” says Lorenz. “Most of the time making records for a living is both fun and edifying,” says Berlin “But every once and a while I get rewarded with a simply superlative experience, and making The End Is New was certainly one of those.” He adds, “We had a blast building these ideas into songs, and Matt’s endless inventiveness made each workday a genuine pleasure. The End is New was produced by trusted friend, producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, who produced The Suitcase Junket’s acclaimed 2018 release, Mean Dog Trampoline. I have tried to use my observations and reflections of the world bent through my fun-house-mirror mind to show what I see a planet stressed. “And writing songs and making art are the methods I have for responding. “The things I value are under attack,” Lorenz writes. With this 2020 release, The End is New, Lorenz’s grand vision for the song overrides the how of it. Solitary on stage and on the road, his mind is crowded with characters, narratives, voices, imagery, sounds as wide and varied as mountain throat singers and roadhouse juke boxes, plus newsreels of the planet’s destruction and salvage. He has been building a catalog, writing a world into existence. While audiences are captivated by his solitary form and the show itself, Lorenz, who homesteads with rescue dogs and chickens in rural Western Massachusetts, is most serious about the songs. The spectacle of his one-man set bears constant comparison to legends of showmanship, brilliance, madness, and invention. What parts five players would perform, he performs alone. What instruments he requires, Lorenz builds from scratch and salvage. Solitary in its thrift and self-reliance. Grand in its imagery, sound, and staging. Matt Lorenz’s vision, manifest in The Suitcase Junket, developed in the tension between the grand and the solitary.
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