Al Menne, best known as the lead singer of beloved Seattle band Great Grandpa, announces their debut solo album, Freak Accident, with a video for lead single “Kill Me,” directed by Chris Farren. The album, due September 22nd on Double Double Whammy was produced by Christian Lee Hutson, engineered and mixed Melina Duterte (Jay Som), and features work from guitarist Meg Duffy (Hand Habits).
Menne’s songs are filled with clever melodies and honeyed, homespun rock arrangements that showcase their taut songwriting. They manage to collapse a maze of gnarled emotions into clear, direct, and inviting pathways, often using humor as an access point to something more profound. On lead single “Kill Me,” for instance, Menne turns the sarcastic eye-roll of the phrase “kill me now” into a heartfelt plea for love.
“Kill me is not only about unrequited feelings but an almost desperate plea for a platonic reassurance,” Menne explains. “I wrote the chorus ‘kill me now please’ as a euphemism for ‘tell me how much you love me…please.’ I was in a low place and really needed to hear it.”
Embedded in the act of calling themself a “freak” is the underlying feeling of not belonging, which Menne calls “a big theme in the writing. I felt kind of like an outsider in my own family for a little bit. I’d ask myself, why do I feel so weird in all of these situations? And I think it’s because I’m trans, and I didn’t know it then.” This sense of physical and emotional displacement resounds across the album as Menne seeks to be fully seen.
At just under thirty minutes, Freak Accident is an inviting meditation on seeking protection from life’s chaotic thunderbolts in our relationships and connections. These nine songs, like smooth rocks pocketed for self-soothing, serve to shore us up against situations that are ultimately out of our control. On tracks that veer through canyons, careen across highways, and wend through the avenues of memory, Menne offers us a way through.
