takeaways Medium Build

• 1 R3verse 03:31
• 2 Downtown Theater 05:27
• 3 fat broke loser 05:32
• 4 Never Told U 03:23
• 5 Balance 03:03
• 6 Ben Affleck 02:30
• 7 J&L 03:50
• 8 Stick A Round 04:36
• 9 White Male Privilege 03:49
• 10 Bigger 02:57
• 11 Miseryy 03:58
• Total Runtime 42:36

Info for takeaways

Nick Carpenter aka Medium Build is expanding his takeaways with four new songs, out now via slowplay/Island Records, including the latest single “Balance.” Carpenter notes: “Wrote this song with my buddy James Glaves. We’ve both struggled for years with sobriety. Failed attempts at moderation. Manic swings between wellness and party lifestyles. My whole life sometimes feels like this huge pendulum swing. Never centered and balanced. This is a snapshot of trying to find that stillness in the chaos.”

The project also includes the new track “Ben Affleck,” which Carpenter says, “Y’all know that picture of Ben Affleck having the cigarette? I know you do. And I know you know the feeling of helpless abandon you can see in his face and body. This is a song about that feeling. It’s a song about wanting to die and wanting to know if you have any real friends. It’s a song about feeling fake as fuck. It’s a song about my good buddy Ben Affleck.”

The expanded playlist includes the re-released tracks “Stick A Round” from Carpenter’s Country LP and “J&L” from Carpenter’s Marietta EP, alongside the newly released tracks “Balance” and “Ben Affleck.” Originally released earlier this year, the first three takeaways tracks reimagine songs from the early chapters of Carpenter’s career, featuring one reworked track each from his self-released albums softboy, roughboy and Wild.

I’m thrilled to share some new songs with you. We started this takeaways thing to be a fun place for me to put demos and live recordings. Today you get two new songs and two stripped versions of songs you know. Ben affleck was a tune I freestyled in January at the height of my pre-sobriety depression. Balance was a song I wrote with my old bestie and MB collaborator James Glaves. James and I have both struggled with our sobriety and mental health something fierce. We’ve written a thousand songs together but Balance is the first time we got in a room to collaborate in 5 years. It was so easy getting to the bottom of the song with him. We have a short hand and an unspoken knowing. Now medicated and sober and sitting together we remembered what we had and this song fell out quick. I’m so insanely proud of how it feels to be healthy and trying to mend fences rather than hiding in my drunk self hating bridge burning hipster bullshit. Balance is obvs about getting sober but also just about trying to love yourself and let the real you rock. I love my buddy and I’m honored to have his patience love and friendship. Life is wild and most of it is mid af. Which I’m really kinda coming around to. And yeah then we slapped on stick around and John and Lydia. Enjoy. Have a good holiday. This is it for me for a spell while me and the gang finish the album and plan for the next few years. I’ll be riding my bike and getting ice cream til next summer. C ya

Medium Build

Medium Build a.k.a. Nick Carpenter
The generous and inviting spirit of Nick Carpenter’s personality manifests in his songwriting, which is why he’s developed such a passionate fan base both in Alaska and outside its borders, as he inspires listeners to dig deep and discover themselves alongside his own emotional journey. Medium Build has toured with pop headliners like Lewis Capaldi and Finneas, but beneath it all, there’s an old country soul, who treasures the simple things in life and keeps his family close to his heart. “Never Learned to Dance” is pure cosmic Americana, complete with lush acoustic guitar and twangy steel, but it’s distinctly contemporary too, a modern tale of digital love and missed connections. More than just the sound alone, what Medium Build takes most from country music is a sense of yearning and restlessness, always in search of another experience and another sound in whatever form they may come. In another era, Medium Build might have just as easily been a rhinestone cowboy lonesome out on the range, a blue-eyed crooner on a smooth-sailing yacht, or a leather-clad video star, but in the here and now, he’s no one but himself.

Carpenter’s vision is to take the sense of community his music creates far beyond wherever he calls home. His upcoming tour focuses specifically on the middle of the continental United States, not just cities often overlooked by major touring artists, but places in the most vital need of queer community and spiritual uplift. The response of Medium Build’s devoted following has been overwhelming, with over a dozen dates sold-out across the Midwest and Southeast. Carpenter aims to bring that message of uplift and affirmation not just around the county, but around the world. His 2023 tour will continue in Europe, including a special sold-out solo performance at the revered St. Pancras Old Church in London, one of the oldest historical sites of Christian worship in the world. It’s a fitting setting for an artist with such a spiritual core to his music: not necessarily religious, but still searching for something joyful and sublime. That soulful passion defines the music of Medium Build, as conducive to collective ecstasy as private revelation.

This album contains no booklet.