Alright. Our April edition, titled Matchstick Monument, is here

with artwork by Max Markowitz:

and here’s the single:

For anyone who wants to remix or cover this song (or other LM songs), there are free stems and sheet music on our contribute page. Send it to us when you’re done and we’ll post it for everyone to hear.

This month’s podcast is hosted by AIG chief Edward Liddy, who conducted an emotional interview with yours truly.

Here are some personal notes about Matchstick Monument (perhaps more than you wanted to know):

From the start of planning for this season of LMM, the first two albums (last month’s and this one) were intended to strongly contrast each other. Though I believe this goal has been well achieved, I think both albums sound far different from how I originally imagined them. The lesson: sometimes you have to take a step back and watch your creation become it’s own. I feel like once I loosened the reigns on my vision, this album became not only it’s own thing, which I could appreciate as an outside observer (not just it’s creator), but also turned out to be much more personal and probably sound a lot more like me.

Thanks to all the musicians who came over and tutored my trouble-making child of an album. They are, in order of sonic appearance: Lewis Keller, Charles DeCastro, Alex Harlan Silverman, Oscar Schedin, Mike Richardson, Drew Jorgensen, and Lisa Tremain.

I think it may be important to also mention the theme of transparency in this record. In writing the music I used very clear, simple chord changes. In recording I used almost only room mics, picking up all the sounds of my garage-studio (including the creaks and dog barks)–(I also tried to not use any digital reverb, just the sound of the room). In the lyrics there are numerous references to my on-going romance with my wife, including multiple unashamed usages of the word “love,” a lyrical cliche which I have attempted to avoid previously, but here I felt appropriate. It is all intentional. So in the spirit of this transparency, I would like to say that this album is for Lisa.