Nick Carpenter’s Medium Build project had a huge year, including making a major label debut with fifth album Country, and then finishing up with a massive European tour in the wake of a new EP called Marietta. Carpenter’s nomadic background — his journey has taken him to the Marietta EP’s titular Atlanta suburb as well as MTSU; Anchorage, Alaska; and East Nashville — has given him quite the continuum of experience, and it’s all there in the music. It’s visceral, naked, kind, furious, horny and gifted with incredible turns of phrase and the kind of wry humor that throws together complex emotional responses and lets you feel it all. Medium Build is a lot, in the best possible way, but never so overwhelming you resent its power. You feel it in your spine, and your heart, and wherever you keep the emotions that don’t get to come out and run around in the yard every day. Carpenter spoke with the Scene while on his tour, shortly after the election.
How has it been to spend the past couple weeks of American history on your European tour?
Oh, man. It’s a little bit bittersweet. It’s nice to be gone, it’s nice to not have to watch, but I’m also on my phone all day, so it’s not like I’m avoiding anything. Generally, Europe is being very empathetic. They feel for us. But I think they are curious, they want to know what we’re for — to which I respond, “You’ve listened to my lyrics, right?” It’s been all right. I try to stay optimistic.
Your album Country and John Grant’s The Art of the Lie have been what’s keeping me sane. And then you drop the Marietta EP. Holy fuck, man, “Triple Marathon”? That’s like Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.” Whoever inspired that song may as well be immortal now.
[Laughs] That is huge to me. “Cloudbusting” is one of my biggest references, that’s a huge compliment.
The soundscape on “John & Lydia” is unreal. It’s some Max Martin widescreen vistas with the most wrenching lyrics. It’s not possible to hear your stuff and not feel it. It makes for an immediate connection and it also triggers this empathy that only the best artists get at.
That is very kind. I was very scared to put out something that sounded that poppy, but I figured if I could win the battle with the lyrics, then that song has several things and styles that I love in it.
People can and do get into your stuff because they love sad-boi indie, but there’s so much more to your sound. It’s also been really interesting looking at your music videos — particularly “In My Room,” “FatBrokeLoser” and “Crying Over U” — how there’s always something conceptual and kinesthetic there. Are you looking to expand further into visual arts, maybe make a film of your own?
Yeah. My brother went to film school when I was a kid. He doesn’t do that anymore, but I watched a bunch of movies with him when I was a kid, and he worked at the local Blockbuster, so the access was there, and I was always watching movies. And then when I was in college I had the Belcourt, and if I had my druthers, I would always be putting sound and picture together, whether it’s for my songs or for making things around tunes that I love. It’s why I love Kubrick and Tarantino, and how the first time I would hear these incredible songs in films. What’s the Stones song at the end of Full Metal Jacket … “Paint It, Black” — these things were meant to go together. I just watched Longlegs last night for the first time, and the impact of the T. Rex tunes and that ’70s Oldsmobile just driving through, and it feels so good, and I want my songs to do that. How great to have a song that lands in such a way, and makes a movie even better.
The country star took over Music City with an abundance of support during his Sixth Annual Rodeo
When I first encountered your work at the Orville Peck show downtown, my first thought was, “This guy’s badass.” Despite country and gospel powering the engine of Music City, it is a profoundly rockist space, so to take the stage without a drummer is gutsy as fuck. And then also when John Waters introduced you, it was all respect. ’Stache game recognize ’stache game.
Best day of my life. What can you say about John Waters? I was probably like 15 the first time I watched Pink Flamingos.
Fifteen is too young for Pink Flamingos.
Oh, it was way too young. I was freaked the fuck out. I didn’t know what anything was. It was definitely an awakening. But the fact that he did his homework on us, introducing me with a grain of salt — you know, taking the piss, but doing so with a great deal of love and care, and really having done his homework — how lucky to meet a hero and have them not be the worst.
When John Waters calls you “hot-ish,” that goes on your business card.
I’ve got to thank Orville for that. He’s always farming and nurturing these relationships. It’s how he can bring out John Waters and Willie Nelson at the same show, it’s so powerful.
It is a testament to the power of queer networking — applying the dinner-party planning mentality to the world as a whole.
Yes. It’s also the best part of the internet.
There are times when it feels like living in Nashville is like banging your head against a particularly glitzy wall that was built on top of a more historic wall that got torn down. With that in mind, is Nashville more or less conducive to dating and hooking up than Alaska?
In the queer community in Anchorage, you kinda run through things pretty quickly; it’s a small pool, and everyone kinda hits it and is done. But in a way, everyone becomes friends because everyone has hooked up and met one another and, “Well, I guess we’re all friends now.” Nashville is easier to hook up in, but it feels so climb-y; everyone’s got an Instagram and a Spotify.
It’s very Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Exactly. And I just tend not to fuck around in Nashville.
You don’t need the drama.
Yeah, that’s a hard-won lesson.
And Nashville is also so closeted. There’s so much of that.
Yeah.
What kind of dog person are you?
Well, I’ve got two dogs with my ex, and one of them is a labradoodle, which they had before we met. And I wouldn’t have thought that I was a labradoodle kind of guy, but I really do like those freaky little Muppets. I like any dog, or sweet critter. I love cats and dogs, because they remind me to get out of my head. I can have pretty dark and low days, and it’s good to have a critter that depends on me and reminds me to move my body and get outside and feed someone else and care for someone else. And it’s healthy to remember that.
When you were growing up in the church, what were the records that someone else played for you that changed your life? There’s this specific subgenre, I find, for things that someone else in your church plays for you that you worry could destabilize the whole setup. For me, it was hearing New Order and The Cure on a church youth retreat. If the heavens aren’t caving in, well, that must mean God thinks Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is pretty fucking sweet as well.
That’s so funny. Because I was always afraid that my enjoyment of secular things didn’t mean that God cosigned on it, but more that I was susceptible to the devil. I think about the first time I heard shocking stuff like The Bloodhound Gang, or [Blink-182 live album] The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show, where it’s just boys being as vulgar as they could possibly be. And I’m listening to this in sixth grade and thinking, “Oh my gosh, if my mom or my youth pastor found out what I was listening to I would be so fucked.” It never occurred to me that maybe God fucks with The Cure, but I think He does. … It makes me think about my own path to hell.
How do you confront the industrial-evangelical complex of modern American life? Because we all have our battles and make our peace, or don’t, with the religious traditions we grow up in. But once you have that figured out for yourself, how do you process that when you run into people who just don’t ask questions because they were raised not to, and now all of a sudden they’re instruments of oppression?
It requires so much empathy. It feels like I’m using the tools I was handed in the evangelical church to witness to nonbelievers — I now feel like I’m using [them] on my more closed-minded family members. Using exposure, and being the one person in someone’s life who doesn’t fight you or reject you because of your own beliefs. I feel like that’s the kind of exposure therapy that we’re all going to require. And I’m also fortunate in that being a microcelebrity makes my cousins that don’t agree with me or what I’m about still kind of like me.
Fame can mean all sorts of things, and you’ve got to use every tool in the box. People tend to overlook how radical actual empathy can be. So many folks see it as just passive, crunchy granola kindness, but real empathy can be dangerous, and that’s absolutely one of the things that I associate with your music.
I don’t think there are other options open to me. I have fucked as many things up as you could in my life, and will continue to do so, and if I can’t find [empathy] for someone else, then who’s going to find it for me?
What’s your favorite of your tattoos? Or at least the one with the best story.
One of the most recent ones I got was the Lacoste logo. … It was kinda like a middle finger to my dad, because he was always obsessed with that brand when we were kids. He never had money, but when he did he’d just spend it on flashy shit. So this tattoo is a bit of a dig on him, like, “This thing that you idolized I have now had painted on me for money.” It’s a little cunty, and when I showed it to him he was just like, “Yep.”
What’s your favorite Weird Al song? I’ve always loved the polka medleys, just for the sheer mad creativity of them.
The polka medleys are amazing because they taught me tunes I didn’t know. As a conservative Christian kid, Weird Al was teaching me pop songs. The one on Bad Hair Day had Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” with “I wanna fuck you like an animal.” How incredible is it to get those lyrics into this form? It’s so sneaky.
There’s something about Weird Al that makes even the strictest of parents let their guard down.
He doesn’t curse, there’s no politics, and it’s very friendly. And I have a theory about Al fans. When I was a kid, I skipped the originals. I didn’t get them. I just wanted the parody of the song I knew. But now, I’ve come into this huge fandom for his originals, the genre parodies, and now my favorite is “Frank’s 2000” TV,” which is his R.E.M.-type beat. It’s off Alapalooza, I think. And he’s doing so much sonically with all the layered Rickenbacker arpeggiated electric guitars, and it’s so beautiful. And even the song on Poodle Hat, “Bob,” where he just does a palindrome sandwich for every lyric. I skipped it so hard when I was a kid, but now I get it and his version of Bob Dylan. I love original Al. I actually made a playlist for one of my favorite songwriters — we were doing a co-write, and I was just yapping about Weird Al, and I made a playlist of a bunch of his original songs and said, “You’ve gotta listen to these lyrics, it’s amazing.” And as for the parodies, I think it’s still got to be “Amish Paradise.” That’s the one that got me in. It lives rent-free in my mind.
What’s your karaoke secret weapon?
It’s always ’90s, and I’ll give you my top three. First, you have to read the room. If it’s mainly men, I’m doing “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger. If it’s mostly women and queers, it’s got to be Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch.” And if it’s millennials, like people my age, I’ll pull out “You Remind Me” by Usher.
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