There’s almost always been a heady emotionalism to the swelling synth-pop tunes that Michael Flynn has penned over the years, first with long-time collaborator Josh Kaler in Slow Runner and then as a solo artist. But Yesterday Don’t Fail Me Now, his new solo project under the Slow Runner moniker that was written in the last five months of Flynn’s dad’s life, couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Or maybe, a worse time, based on its Oct. 11 release.
Flynn, a longtime Charleston scene member now based in Asheville, N.C., found himself releasing this grief-stricken effort to a community still reeling from the ravages of Hurricane Helene. It’s somehow fitting that the album, perhaps the most haunting, affecting — and hopeful — of his career, happened to align with a time in which his community is going through such similar emotions.
Contemplation through composition
“I spent a lot of time at my dad’s house, helping my mom take care of him and soaking in his company,” Flynn writes in the liner notes. “There was a lot of time for thinking about weighty things, death and time and love that pushes up against the limits of reality. There was a lot of time for writing, going over lyrics in my head or picking out melodies on the old upright piano I learned to play on as a boy.”
The sound of Flynn’s contemplations of mortality and memory, love and loss and the bonds of family are echoed in the lives of his fellow western North Carolinians as these songs are finally released. But they almost weren’t.
“I was kind of planning on taking a little break from music,” he said in an interview with the Charleston City Paper. “I’ve had a career where I’ve had enough good things happen to make it not crazy to pursue it, but not enough good things happen to sort of reach escape velocity where it’s reflected in my bank account.
“I mean, I’ve had a great life and I’ve made a middle class existence making dorky pop songs. So in so many ways, I feel like I’ve been in a dream all of my life, and yet, I’m in my late 40s, and I’m still playing in the same rooms [that I was 20 years ago].”
But in the middle of his father’s cancer diagnosis, Flynn won the NewSong Music Showcase, which covered the recording and mixing costs at Asheville’s Citizen Studios. Hence, he was spurred to write and finish this batch of songs, which he called “intensely therapeutic.”
Compositions like the opening “Weep My Little Lullaby” are quite literal depictions of how he processed his grief. The tune, more mantra than pop song, served as a musical and narrative mission statement for the record, with searching lyrics accompanied by a cerebral mixture of acoustic and electronic instrumentation that lopes and swoons like a boat adrift at sea. It is as beautiful and hopeful as it is weighty and melancholic.
“This record, more than any I’ve ever been involved with, was a process of just gleefully combining real things and fake things with nothing but the end emotional goal in mind,” he said. “There’s sampled strings mixed with real strings, and you end up with a thing that sounds mostly like real strings, but sometimes not quite. And that would have felt duplicitous to me 20 years ago. Now, it just feels like, oh, we made it beautiful, and I couldn’t afford to hire an orchestra anyway. This is kind of perfect.”
While almost every track connects to this period in the songwriter’s life, he’s quick to point out that many songs do not deal directly with his father dying. Lead single “The Skull of Mary Magdalene,” for instance, is a playful Peter Gabriel–esque banger about love and staying in the moment, while the cheeky “My Variant” plays Covid-19 tropes against the experience of fatherhood.
Both of these tunes also bring some of the sharp humor and pop smarts that have long been Flynn’s calling card, and round out the contours of the album’s emotional center a bit.
It’s not a stretch to say this record could be the crowning achievement of the songwriter’s career, either under the Slow Runner moniker or as a solo act. In some ways, it’s also fitting that he comfortably resurrects the band name/alias for the new collection.
The album release show, scheduled to take place at Citizen Studios in Asheville, where the album was pressed and recorded, was obviously postponed. Flynn said he hoped to announce a new date for that show, as well as a Charleston show, soon.
Slow Runner, still
Flynn sighs a bit when asked about the switch back to the band name. After all, Slow Runner was mostly just him and multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaler, now an engineer in Nashville, and they continued to collaborate on the songwriter’s solo records. His legal name became an awkward liability when a general of the same name couldn’t stay out of the headlines. And Slow Runner, thanks to the major label push and some key soundtrack placements, continues to garner better streaming numbers than his “by name only” solo material.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Flynn said. “Twenty years from now, this is all disco. This is all in the final bargain bin at Goodwill for a dollar. We shouldn’t take ourselves that seriously.”
Learn more and listen at slowrunner.net.
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