His new album, ‘King of Having Fun,’ dropped Friday, Sept. 4
Credit: Beth Garrabrant
NEED TO KNOW
- Medium Build (also known as Nick Carpenter) released his new album King of Having Fun on Friday, Sept. 4
- The album is inspired by a tumultuous period that led to him getting sober
- “I made the record in this sort of manic, like, mental clarity, knowing I needed to get better, but it was very fresh,” he tells PEOPLE
Medium Build has faced the music.
When PEOPLE last caught up with the alt rocker also known as Nick Carpenter, he had recently committed to sobriety, started medication to treat his bipolar II disorder and taken a break from social media. Now, 18 months later, he’s documenting that tumultuous chapter on an excellent new album, King of Having Fun (out Friday, Sept. 4), while also facing his biggest triggers as he returns to the spotlight.
“What I realized in the sobriety, especially now that I’m back on the road and all my triggers are back — because the triggers don’t go away — you get into this little bubble of nine months not working, and I was like, ‘I’m so healed,’” Carpenter, 35, tells PEOPLE. “[Then] first day of tour, it’s like, ‘Whoa, I wanna get f—ed up. I remember this.’ I remember walking off stage and being jittery and needing to have three stiff drinks to go out there and meet people. So the triggers show up, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I use [substances] to navigate a world that feels very scary to me.’”
Carpenter traces his addictive personality back to his youth, growing up a “husky” kid in Georgia.
“It’s kind of once an addict, always an addict once you know that the most impaired version of you can turn to whatever the numbing out is. When I was a kid, it was food, right? And then when I turned 18, I found alcohol and was like, ‘If I don’t eat and I drink, then I’ll lose weight and I’ll be more fun.’ So then that started an entire new f—ed up dysmorphia thing. Then it turns from booze into sex or sex into online attention or whatever. It’s all the ways we choose to mask how cruel and weird life is.”
Carpenter addresses all of those vices on King of Having Fun, a strikingly vulnerable record and his best to date.
On the storytelling standout “Bird Woman,” Carpenter, who is bisexual, hints at an affair with a married man who made promises of a future. The song came to him when he was waiting for his therapy appointment and saw a woman doing Tai Chi — then a mockingbird making mating calls. “And I’m like, ‘That’s me. I’m this f—ing peacock trying to get laid, but I’m wanting the place of this woman.’ I just coveted the sort of zen she had.”
Adds Carpenter: “I’ve met couples who are quote-unquote ‘open.’ I’ve been the one who comes in when the bed’s warm and he’ll tell you, ‘I’m gonna leave her. I’m gonna do all these things, da, da, da,’ but they won’t — more than I would like to admit. And I think that is also a sign of my own insecurity and desperation for validation and connection. Before, when I would black out, I’d be trying to get someone to hug me, kiss me, tell me I’m hot, whatever. I love that it is very literal, but there’s enough big stuff for people to put their own narrative in it.”
“Cone Off” — another highlight featuring the lyrics, “I feel like a dog that just got its cone off … Now I’m free as a Costco sample / I’m unchained” — was actually inspired by the end of the aforementioned situationship.
“It’s like the breakup tune of all breakup tunes,” Carpenter says. “We did the no contact. Then we did the last coffee walk; there was a little bit of crying, there was the goodbye hug, and then it was like, ‘I’m out. I’m done.’ And that feeling…I literally went home and thought, ‘I feel like a dog that just got its cone off.’ And I was like, ‘Is that feeling of true freedom?’ And it takes time — there’s a healing process, it’s not a straight line, you do regress and sometimes you text, but eventually, you find the power to block them on your phone and on Instagram. And you can live your life in true redneck freedom.”
Elsewhere, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter recognizes similar patterns on “Chill,” which he nearly cut from the track list before a friend talked some sense into him, saying, “We need this. You’re never angry; you’re never a bitch.”
“I’m a wishful-thinking type; I will project all of the best qualities onto the person that I am fascinated with and then let myself get broken. I’m almost addicted to that cycle: ‘You’re gonna save me. You’re the best. I wished everything for us. I thought you were this way, but you’re not.’ And then I find out you’re a human and I’m devastated. And I’m like, ‘But I’m fine, right?’ I’m screaming, ‘I’m fine,’” he says with a laugh. “It’s really toxic. But I feel like I’m starting to grow out of that.”
Through therapy and a 12-step program, Carpenter has been confronting the self-destructive tendencies he sings of on the album.
Credit: Douglas Mason/Getty
“I made the record in this sort of manic, like, mental clarity, knowing I needed to get better, but it was very fresh — kind of getting my sea legs, like, ‘Can I do this?’ Can I do life without tequila? Can I write without getting f—ed up?” he says. “Some of them were written towards the end of the drinking period, and then almost all of them were in the chaos of having a buzz and touring and burnout. So you can hear tinges of my exhaustion and bitterness and this existential hope.”
That hope was a breakthrough for the artist, who has struggled with suicidal ideation: “I don’t mean hope as in, like, it’s gonna be okay. Hope, like, I have hope for the first time: ‘Whoa, I think I might make it another calendar year.’”
Carpenter has seen a shift since he got his diagnosis and began taking medication.
“So finally, after telling enough doctors, like, once a week, I want to blow my brains out or drink all of the tequila in a six mile radius and I can’t process life… I don’t know why that didn’t seem crazy to me, but one guy on was like, ‘Yeah, brother, that’s, bipolar.’ I used to have these really big highs, and then I have these huge crashes. So my, my crashes, I still feel them, but they’re less violent,” he says. “I sort of fetishized this non-medicated life as more authentic. Meds are actually good for us. I spent so long trying to be tough, trying to raw dog it.”
On King of Having Fun’s first single, “Armor,” Carpenter immortalizes that feeling with its frantic beat and stream-of-consciousness lyrics: “That’s how my brain feels,” he says.
It’s the album’s title track, though, that serves as a thesis as Carpenter begins to reconcile who he is at his core in his newfound sobriety. The song came to him when he was with his guitar player Josh.
“The label sets you up with all these pro songwriters, but this was just hanging out with my friend and talking about how embarrassed we feel to be, like, 35 and hungover having spent all night chainsmoking on a patio with a bunch of, like, 20-somethings. We were talking about, ‘Didn’t I used to just be fun?’ Both of us were silly kids, and we were talking about all the s— we used to get up to — making movies with our friends, doing back flips off the porch, riding your bike to Waffle House and drinking a thousand Coca-Colas. That kind of pure, unadulterated joy…is that kid still in me at all? If I take away all the substances, who’s in there?” Carpenter says. “I think he’s in there. But that ultimately felt like the truest story for the album, because it is a guy trying to find out who he really is without all the s—.”
Now back on the road — he’s been performing at festivals and opening for Mumford and Sons before kicking off his King of Having Fun Tour in October — Carpenter admits returning to a part of his former lifestyle is adjustment.
“We had a party culture, and I was kind of the captain of that team. And when you retire and they’re like, ‘Well, what do you mean? What do we do after shows now?’ I’m like, ‘We drink NA Guinness and watch movies,’” he says of being back on the road with his band. “I try to give them a little bit of leeway, but most of the tour is booze free now.”
With a supportive team around him, Carpenter feels better equipped this time around.
Credit: Jeff Hahne/Getty
“There’s always a little fear of crashing out again, you know? I have communicated to the people around me what I need. I really do need my management [checking in] once a week,” he says. “But I feel like this year has been me trying to undo [my destructive patterns] and accept that I have this immense privilege — and instead of waste it, be a good steward of it.”
Medium Build’s King of Having Fun is out now.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP; If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.
Read the full article here
