If you can come of age, you can come of middle age. Maybe the process is just as humiliating: sex, death, and standing desks. On Yeah, mostly, Woodstock, New York composer and songwriter Will Epstein goes gentle into that good night; it’s a portrait of the quotidian and the existential lit by the refrigerator’s glow.
A cinematic treatment of black mold and dishwashers isn’t entirely out of left field—Epstein has soundtracked films like the 2023 documentary Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV and the 2023 sci-fi film New Strains. But where these scores are alternately jazzy and extraterrestrial, his latest solo album—a follow-up to 2023’s Wendy—is planted firmly here on earth, miniature tableaux of costume dramas and tomato sandwiches rendered in pithy pop couplets.
Epstein recorded the LP at his home studio on an eight-track tape machine, singing live and unedited, which gives many of the vocals the feel of an intimate voice note. He studied Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask during this period, but where the Velvet Underground alum insists on infusing the day-to-day with heavy symbolism (“The image of the poet’s in the breeze/Canadian geese are flying above the trees”), Epstein finds plenty of material below the skyline, in the corners of aging buildings and the places where people go about their days. On “Riverside,” we step into an apartment made of “lapis and limestone” with “General Grant bones” and a wine-stained rug. Elsewhere, we’re with Epstein standing at his standing desk on a song titled, aptly, “Standing at My Standing Desk.” There’s less Lou Reed swagger and more Paul Simon melancholy, a survey of modern American accoutrements and spiritual confusion delivered with a shrug.
The result is a set of tracks that are earnest and exploratory, existentialism by way of a grocery list. There’s no pretense. You can be heartbroken in a pair of boxer briefs, ruminating over a sad bowl of Froot Loops, the same as you can brood over a windy moor. Grief feels cinematic even in microdoses, even at the kitchen counter.
It hits hardest on “That’ll Be Me,” a recitation of tragedies that blur into the background of Epstein’s existential revelation. The air is toxic; people die alone; wildfires ravage a friend’s childhood home; and at the center of the song’s chorus, an acknowledgement that the wealth of a fulsome life just means more to lose when it’s over.
When he’s not serious, he’s whimsical, and this tonal shift makes certain tracks feel decidedly goofy, the sort of ditties you’d sing to your cat or ad-lib between chores. “I can’t believe it’s time to run the dishwasher again,” Epstein opens “Dishwasher,” a song about small luxuries—“I can choose any bowl I want”—and, maybe, the illusion of control. The panoply of clean spoons ultimately rings hollow when a bout of low blood sugar “darkens his mood.” To look inside the dishwasher is not unlike looking into the void.
Epstein’s vocals are almost always at the fore, but the taut instrumentals and production on songs like “Brideshead Revisited Revisited” belie Yeah, mostly’s casual ethos. When the saxophone enters around 1:40, it’s like heat shimmering on pavement, an aura that extends through the song’s close. The keys are warm and warbling, like a Garth Hudson homage. And throughout the record, instrumental guest stars like Zosha Warpeha (hardanger d’amore), Eli Crews and Kurt Kotheimer (bass), and Austin Vaughn and Kenny Wollesen (percussion) add dimension and depth to an otherwise DIY affair.
If the album’s title is nonchalant, it’s a decoy you see through by the opening bars of “Saturday Night.” Love is embarrassing and earnest, and comfort doesn’t arrive wearing sequins. The things we want are human and dorky, often unglamorous: a voice note from the seltzer aisle. The hum of a saxophone over babbling keys. A variety of clean spoons. Is it enough to stave off dread? Yeah, mostly.
