Don’t let the name fool you. Atlanta’s Elijah Johnston is no rustic, deconstructed roots crooner. He’s a craftsman and a tinkerer all the way—a guy equally swayed by alt-rock’s arena-sized choruses and the refined singer/songwriter emoting of the 1990s and 2000s. The two aesthetics are hardly mutually exclusive, as Stupid Soul demonstrates time and again with its clear-eyed sentiments, easy hooks, efficient performances and polished production.
Stupid Soul is out tomorrow on Strolling Bones, but here’s an exclusive premiere of the album for MAGNET readers. Johnston also weighs in on each track below.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Leonard”
“The musician’s life is often filled with too many substances and too much of a good time—and it’s frightening to see people slip away into that. This mellow folk/rock tune is a thankful exhale, realizing it’ll all be OK.”
2) “Ideas”
“This is essentially the mission statement of the record, and it’s intentionally open-ended. Everyone has big plans and ideas for the future, and everyone has challenges they have to overcome to make them happen.”
3) “Keep It To Yourself”
“I wrote this as an earnest love song about the small things and inside jokes that exist in a relationship. I mention all sorts of small things that are meaningful in my relationship and reflect on how important humor is in keeping any relationship strong.”
4) “Baby Bands”
“An ode to classic vocal pop and ’60s rock ’n’ roll, the song is based on the tribulations of small-time music life—and wondering why nobody ever learns how to sing. Ironically, this was the hardest song on the record to sing.”
5) “Oxygen”
“I wanted this to feel like a wide-open folk/rock anthem in the vein of early 2000s acoustic radio pop. That type of music was such a big part of my childhood, and I was revisiting a lot of it in preparation for this record. There’s a simplicity and depth of emotion I was trying to reach with this song, and it lent itself to a big bearhug of an arrangement.”
6) “I Know What You Did Last Summer”
“This uses the campy, ’90s teen-horror classic of the same name as a framework to explore teenage feelings of shame and angst that linger into adulthood, shaping the way we view our bodies and our moral standards.”
7) “Days Like These”
“A warm, glowing heartland rocker about focusing on the important things. (Manager and guitarist) Drew (Beskin) carefully excised unnecessary information, improving it instantly. In its place, we have a lovely post-chorus guitar solo from (producer) Tommy (Trautwein)—our tribute to Mike Cambell and classic Petty songs.”
8) “Instant Replay”
“One of the several songs about childhood nostalgia, ‘Instant Replay’ was also one of the first songs on the record written in an alternate open tuning. The recording goes all in on the nostalgia angle, conjuring memories of early-2000s indie rock and emo with pillow production and fluttering electric guitars.”
9) “Everything We Hold Dear”
“Tommy once gave me a writing prompt that I found interesting. He wanted me to write a sad song about New Year’s Eve. The last thing written for the record, it was initially electric before shifting to the acoustic-based breakup ballad it is now. Labelmate Jordan (Reynolds) from Rose Hotel contributed the only guest vocal performance on the record. I feel like it adds a fantastic emotional grounding to the song.”
10) “Valentine’s Day”
“A cover song is hard to make your own—a Springsteen cover even more so. An important piece of our live show, ‘Valentine’s Day’ fit so snugly with the record’s themes that it felt right to place it among the originals. Captured in a continuous live take, it’s our attempt at taking the muted Springsteen original and stretching and inflating it, hopefully turning it into a rock ’n’ roll standard.”
11) “Double Fault”
“I wrote this song one line at a time in the way David Berman or Jeff Tweedy might, trying to craft lyrics intuitively based on sound and feeling rather than meaning. It was sequenced second to last to allow the outro to serve as something of a climactic moment before the end of the record.”
12) “Football Season”
“A humble meditation on the simple pleasures and sadness of growing up … the first sign of fall weather, your first kiss, your first heartbreak. It’s framed around the idea that football season is a marker in time, a feeling to return to. My brother Gideon and I wrote it with the intent of making something that felt timeless and personal at the same time.”
