You might be surprised Andy Grammer called his new album Monster. He was too. Long known as one of the most optimistic bright lights in the pop singer-songwriter sphere, Grammer found himself fighting demons and finding new corners of himself, places he hadn’t wanted to venture before. “Being happy, anger is my vulnerability,” he says. “I didn’t know how to deal with getting in touch with anger. I just pretended it wasn’t there.” Grammer embarked on a long mental health journey that mirrored an exploratory five-year interim between albums which, of course, happened to coincide with a particularly tumultuous five years for all of us. After everything, Monster, arriving October 4, became a document of someone walking through a fire they never wanted to even look at, and what happens when they emerge on the other side.
In the half decade since 2019’s Naive, Grammer lived a lot of life. There were heart-bursting highs, like welcoming his second child, and harrowing trials, including the rupture of an important relationship. During the bleak pandemic years, he sought therapy for the first time, and began realizing there were all kinds emotions he was just beginning to process for the first time. Originally, Grammer experimented with capturing an era dynamic with both struggle and growth in smaller snapshots: A host of steady singles across 2020-2023, as well as 2022’s The Art Of Joy EP. Back then, Grammer planned to collect the singles alongside a few new songs for his fifth album. Instead, he picked up a mandolin.
Grammer wasn’t intending to make an album built around mandolin, but it happened. He wrote one song called “Bigger Man,” the genesis and skeleton key to what became Monster. It was an uncustomary track for him: grappling with anger, but striving to remain bigger than the darker sides of that emotion. Suddenly a new album began pouring out of Grammer. The folk pedigree of the mandolin proved inspiring.
Like a good therapy session, Monster excavates life from one angle after another. Lead single “I Do” features Grammer singing alongside country music duo Maddie & Tae, in a song written about Grammer’s wife Aijia that both playfully and thoughtfully depicts how the couple navigates the ups and downs of long relationships. “I sing ‘Even when I don’t love you, I do,’” he says. “Aijia and I have a standard of love for each other that’s bigger than the moment. We’re both committed to something larger.” The couple wrote and recorded other material for the record, including “Grey,” a song that mulls over whether love will survive as we age, and “Unforgivable,” an unflinching track influenced by a friend’s divorce. Pain and euphoria mingle freely. Grammer reclaims his “nice guy” reputation after getting stung in “Save A Spot In The Back”; playing on “nice guys finish last,” he proclaims “Save a spot in the back for me.” “Magic” surges forward like a classic indie-pop banger while reminiscing on loss and the unexplainable in life that, nevertheless, give it all its vibrancy. The song has an extra layer of poignance as the last composition Grammer wrote with his longtime collaborator Bram Inscore prior to Inscore’s tragic death.
