As soon as he came up with the line “I had a lover who had a lover,” Art Schop’s Martin Walker knew he had a song. “Pythagoras in a love triangle—what could be better than that?” he says.
“Me, My Lover, Her Lover, Part 1” is a heady first dip into Art Schop’s unabashedly academic fifth album, The Fifth Hammer, which takes its title and central theme from Daniel Heller-Roazen’s The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras And The Disharmony Of The World. That 2011 book examines the major philosophical missteps of Greek polymath Pythagoras and other legendary minds. It’s also worth noting that Pythagoras is thought to have invented harmony.
A former physics major from Oxford University who’s published his own philosophical tome, 2007’s Life! Why We Exist … And What We Must Do To Survive, Walker would seem an unlikely candidate for the role of studio rat. Previous albums have drawn parallels between the 2008 financial crisis and the rise and fall of the Greek Empire, sifted through the personal and professional lives of Michelangelo, Lou Reed and other artists, and explored humanity’s place in the universe. And while meticulous in a way you’d expect from someone cut from that cerebral cloth, Walker leavens the high-minded subject matter with a fair amount of folky intimacy and earthy humor. He recorded just about everything on The Fifth Hammer himself before bringing in Mark Nevers, who also mixed one of his favorites, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s Master And Everyone.
Walker offers a few more thoughts on The Fifth Hammer’s latest single:
“Simultaneously arrogant and insecure, brilliant and clueless, our Pythagoras can’t allow himself to accept that reality isn’t perfect. His lover tells him that her love is apportioned equally between him and his rival. Instead of finding that hard to swallow, he calculates the distance between himself and her other lover: ‘the square root of two.’”
We’re proud to premiere Art Schop’s “Me, My Lover, Her Lover, Part 1.”
—Hobart Rowland
