Market Well I Asked You A Question

Since writing 2022's The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong, Market's NateMendelsohn has become more entrenched in the Brooklyn, NY music community,producing the recent Frankie Cosmos and Dougie Poole albums, performingin Vagabon and Sam Evian, and recording with Yaeji and Lady Lamb. Theseexperiences with adventurous artists likely resonate with fans of records like PetSounds, Fantasma, Insignificance, Blonde, or XO. Well I Asked You A Question'saforementioned sonic palette wonderfully melds the physical and the synthetic:sampled orchestras duel with real orchestras ("Fantasy"), a robot's spoken wordduets with a choir of humans ("Around"), and blasts of noise "solo" overtraditional rock instrumentation ("Rachel's Getting Married").Though many of the sounds on the record are augmented and fractured,Mendelsohn still worked with the Market band, consisting of Stephen Becker,Natasha Bergman, and Duncan Standish, to build out the songs. He wanted"musical accidents with frayed edges le in_still a group of people, in a room,playing songs." Beyond the core band, world-expanding contributions camefrom Katie von Schleicher, Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney, Alto Palo), JustinFelton (L'Rain, Strugglin'), Rose Droll (Feist, Art Feynman) and Helen Newbywith engineering by Adam Hirsch (Sam Amidon, Stephen Steinbrink).Well I Asked You a Question is ambitious and complex, but Mendelsohntempers those goals by aiming at heart, toward the very human. Lyrically, it's anexploration of speaking, asking, responding and the muddled nature of talkingto one's self versus interacting with others. In his words, he's alternately "escapingthe noise of the world by going inward" and "escaping the noise of the brainby going outward." Whether swaddled in sound or absorbing the errantthoughts it carries, we're along for the ride.