Nobody Lives Here Anymore

*For a limited time, orders of the black 2xLP will included a limited-edition letterpressed 'Oracle Card' featuring one of five original illustrations from Max Clarke (Cut Worms).*

'Nobody Lives Here Anymore' is the haunted reverie of an American landscape in-and-out of Max Clarke’s mind. Recorded between May and November 2019 in Memphis, Tennessee, the album is a snow globe of the mid-twentieth-century’s popular music filled with jangling guitars, honkey tonk pianos, and Telstar organs.

Max immediately started writing material for his sophomore LP after an extensive eighteen-months of touring. Mining his life-long devotion to the lost American songbook for inspiration, he stockpiled nearly thirty new songs by the time he flew to Memphis to work with producer Matt Ross-Spang at Sam Phillips Recording Studio. Unlike earlier works that were meticulously demoed, Max opted for rough drafts to capture something more immediate and honest. Most of the initial takes were tracked live with Noah Bond on drums, while Max sang and played rhythm guitar. Max then built lush arrangements around these intimate performances. A skeleton crew of friends and Memphis all-stars were called in to lay down pedal steel, sax, and strings. When all was said and done, they had recorded 17 new cosmic Americana gems.

Max sees this record as a figurative shot across the bow to the modern attention span. He says 'Nobody Lives Here Anymore' is about “throwaway consumer culture and how the postwar commercial wet dreams never came true, how nothing is made to last.” He considers the golden years of a society on its last leg with poignant curiosity, suggesting not only that nobody lives the American dream, but that nobody lives here, in this moment, anymore. “It’s about homesickness for childhood, for a place that never really existed,” says Max.

A loss of innocence lingers through this 80-minute opus as Max attempts to harbor love and meaning inside a world that sold itself out. While his grand anthems overflow with timeless pop charm, his ability to dig deeper than lollipops and holding hands sets his work apart from the days of 45s and Top of the Pops.