A Southeasterner by birth, Nick Carpenter has undeniably been influenced by the good ol’ boy country sounds and sights of his Georgia upbringing plus his Nashville years, despite an intermission making music way northeast. “When I was in Alaska building Medium Build, it was mainly, like, 20-something queers…purple-haired, face-piercing baristas and that’s what I was at the time. So my audience kind of looked like me because I was the bartender with the nose ring, and those were the spaces I hung out in.”
Back in the continental U.S. recently, Carpenter is welcoming in fans who are maybe new to expressing and naming their feelings. He increasingly hears from middle-aged straight men admitting Medium Build songs move them. On King of Having Fun, Carpenter illustrates some composite characters, folks you might know around these parts — and folks you might also, in fact, be. The protagonist of single “Home Depot” is Steve, a tough, avoidant dude now much more identifiable than before to the singer-songwriter that created him.
Carpenter confessed, “What started as an exercise of like, ‘I’m gonna lampoon this guy,’ like, we’re gonna spear this total unaware evil stepdad kind of guy…By the end of the process of writing the tune and now playing it out, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m him.’ And we all have him, and a lot of people are married to him or date him or were raised by him. And so it feels like what started as, ‘I’m gonna whack this guy’ has turned into, like, we’ve humanized him and then also maybe put up the mirror.”
After emerging from toxic relationships and writing plenty about that damage on records like the celebrated Country in 2024, Medium Build’s tone on King of Having Fun is trademark wry but also super sincere, humbled, intentionally. It’s observational of the world and people around him but obviously in close comparison with himself. “A lot of the material that ended up being unearthed was [a] freshly raw, sober dude wondering if he’s still a person after he got all of his little dreams.”
On “Bird Woman,” he wonders and worries aloud that he’s more akin to the squawking mockingbird in the park than the zen woman doing tai chi underneath it. But on “Thank You Cook,” he thanks a former lover for the lessons: “When the love I learn from you becomes the love that I give myself.” About the place he’s in now, and the forced retreat and regroup that yielded these songs, Carpenter shows appreciation. “It’s just like this sort of gratitude ritual and there’s no bitterness.”
Hear Carpenter On The Record with WNXP describing the contents of this new album, how and with whom it was made in Music City, some of his favorite places in town plus the type of songwriting he reveres and hopes to reach.
