Supertentacles - King of Nothing
It’s a little ironic that singer songwriter Sean Anderson attributes the weight of underachievement as a primary inspiration for his band Supertentacles' latest album King of Nothing.
The release of the 10-track, genre-fluid album is quite the achievement on its own. Each song was written, recorded and mixed by Anderson himself.
“I started writing some of these songs eight years or so ago and some I wrote last year—it covers a lot of time,” Anderson says. “Each song is about different topics about different points of my life.”
Those topics flutter between anxieties about living up to your parents’ expectations, getting a respectable job, nostalgia and being generally pissed-off about the happenings of the past couple of years.
But the songs on King of Nothing don’t really fall under the category of pissed-off music. With swaying, bouncy rhythms and poppy melodies, Supertentacles wears the indie-rock hat well, often changing its complimentary aspects from song to song. “No Creature Left Behind,” the opening track, stacks layers of string instruments, dipping its toes into country rock territory with its catchy slide guitar leads.
Energetic Harmonies
Later, a break in “The Last of the Salamander Kings” features a keyboard solo dancing with the song’s recurring guitar melody, showcasing Anderson’s ability to produce a lead with any of the instruments in his arsenal. That song culminates in an explosion of energetic vocal harmonies and instrumentals. “Turtle Shell,” a song about persevering through feelings of self-doubt, incorporates elements of funk and psyche-rock, strategically placed in the middle of the album -- just as the listener might think they’ve pinned the band’s sound.
“With the way I was trying to record this album, a couple of big influences were Beck and Alex G—solo musicians that aren’t really solo in a way,” Anderson says. “They can put as much as they want into these songs but not be constrained by worrying how to play it live later.”
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That idea may be the reason that Supertentacles has never performed live, but Anderson is aiming to change that in 2022. He’s begun practicing with other musicians and is planning on doing a double-album release show, celebrating his debut full-length Supertentacles as well as King of Nothing.
The conception of Supertentacles dates back to the end of Anderson’s previous band Antler House. That band’s final release in 2017, a single titled “Thunderbird Country,” appears with a fresh new coating on King of Nothing. Anderson recalls hearing Antler House’s version of the song for the first time in a while on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee one day, realizing how far his recording abilities had come since. So, he decided to rerecord “Thunderbird Country.”
“The main lyrics are ‘Back where I’d never set foot again,’ so that was kind of like surreal—resinging those lyrics and recreating this song that was from five years ago,” Anderson says.
It’s a move that runs parallel with the overarching theme of the album—overcoming self-doubt and turning those negative emotions into productivity.
The album closes out with “Learn to Love the Void,” a song seemingly about coming to terms with and facing depression. Anderson sings “It’s been such a lonely afternoon without you,” a recurring lamentation that pops up in the chorus. It’s one final reminder that the collection of ten tracks coming to close—every instrument and every voice heard—was performed solely by Anderson at his home studio. With isolation being a large part of the past couple of years, it’s a familiar sentiment.
But with how huge this album presents itself, it’s easy to forget that. Anderson might portray himself as a King of Nothing, but listeners will get the sense that he’s being quite modest with himself.
