Andy Jenkins Since Always

Andy Jenkins new album Since Always came from letting go-ofself-perceptions, of expectations, of assumptions. Jenkins found spaceto trust himself as the guitarist for his own songs, and producer NickSanborn stepped into a new kind of production role, dreaming up ideasand filtering through them together. There was, in short, a very adulttrust to it all, two fans working in tandem to make something; a recordwhere the loss and love, compromise and gain of adulthood come intofull view.Both busy pieces of their respective but intertwined music scenes inRichmond and Durham, Jenkins and Sanborn had been fans of oneanother for years but had never formally collaborated. Jenkins had spenta few years gathering songs for the follow-up to his 2018 debut, SweetBunch; the new ones were intricately rendered odes to the assortedassurances and anxieties that can come with finding some measure ofcontentment as you cross into yours 30s. Don't send demos, Sanbornsuggested; simply drive the two hours down, and live in the studio fortwo weeks while spring drifted into the South.As Jenkins rolled through his tracks, Sanborn listened and allowed hisimagination to run wild and flooded Jenkins with ideas-rhythmic shifts,keyboard flourishes, vocal effects. There was double-time piano, amistake dropped into "Too Late" they both loved. There was theVocoder selection during "Emptiness Is," a choice that allowed the pairto hang so much of the song on bass and drums alone. There was thesequence that bubbles beneath "Leaving Before," a mirror of the lyricalnervous heart.When Amelia Meath and Flock of Dimes' Jenn Wasner were pallingaround the studio, Sanborn asked if they would mind singing on a fewtracks. That's Meath on "Blue Mind," sweetly trailing Jenkins' linesabout being under love's spell like she's offering an incantation, andWasner rising through the static dawn of "Lovesick." "Andy wantedsomeone to make decisions he would never make," remembersSanborn. "It was this mining operation we got to do together."As the songs steadily cohered, though, Jenkins insisted it was finallytime to drop his guitars. "I have never been a particularly competentguitar player," he says now with a little laugh, but Sanborn loved theidiosyncratic way his strums sat against his voice, so he stalled. They'dneed to wait for Jenkins' longtime collaborator, an ace named AlanParker, to come down from Richmond and replace those parts. WhenParker did, he heard the same thing as Sanborn-yes, he was moretechnically proficient, but his overdubs didn't have the same personality,the same narrative truth. Jenkins relented, so his guitars stayed andanchor the album.