"Rock n roll and ice cream cones / Roller skates and hula hoops / Record players, hot air balloons / All my friends, especially you... Planet of love"
The crooked smile and utterly endearing wonder of "Planet of Love" by New Orleans songwriter, bandleader, side-man Max Bien Kahn and from his newest album "Flowers", brims with whimsy and as sense of his world or maybe the world in general being sweet and bitter. The indie rock sway, adorned with kind of 60's kind of music hall charm had me thinking of the Kinks. It is a pretty, take and earlier I mentioned this track as bittersweet and maybe that came to mind because the notion of a planet of love (as I interpret Kahn's poetry) feels like an actual planet, maybe suggesting that our world is not a planet of love, if you catch my drift.
Still, the track with Kahn's languid wonky vocal aesthetic, the chunky muted electric guitar notes against folk-esque acoustic rhythms, shuffling drums, bubbling bass lines,wonderful orchestrations that feel like cyclical otherworldly transmissions from space and wonderful melotron-esque flutes, all make for a beautiful ballad that might not be bittersweet at all but instead saturated in pure optimism. I thought of Talking Heads for some reason swimming in "Planet of Love" and as I dipped my toe into the "Flowers" album, with it's sideways stares and mix of genres like the doo wop surfy blues dance of "Whatever You Want" or the bohemian folk road rock ramble of "White Noise", the casio-fied bedroom pop torch song balladry of "Stranger" or the tropical psychedelia of "Flowers" and more.
"Flowers", the album has a lovely, adroit, sentimental persona. In the end (at least thus far) it feels nostalgic and timeless, it feels like the effect that John Lennon and Harry Nilsson had on each other (or something like that). If you don't believe me just listen to "Saturday Night" (track 3).
LINER NOTES:
[Kahn’s never made an album like Flowers before. When he’s recording in New Orleans, the projects are usually live material or feature a lot of guest performers. It’s how you get a record like When I Cross It Off, which includes folks like Esther Rose, Video Age, Steph Green, Duff Thompson, and Shaye Cohn. This time, though, it was just Kahn, Farbe, Pearson, and Snyder. “It’s a much more intimate process,” Kahn says. And the songs get personal without losing Kahn’s trademark brightness. He’ll always try to be funny about the things that are following him around, be it death, marriage, and whatever triumphs and tragedies fall someplace in-between. Flowers is a rock-steady album that inexplicably documents our humanity and who we become in the wake of loss and on the precipice of falling in love. “When I was writing these songs, I was trying to make it more of a spiritual journey,” he continues, “spiritual not as in God, but in connecting to the planet, connecting to your family, connecting to yourself more.”]
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://soundcloud.com/maxbienkahn
https://maxbienkahn.bandcamp.com/album/flowers
https://www.instagram.com/maxbienkahn
https://www.facebook.com/MaxandtheMartians/
Max Bien Kahn is a songwriter, bandleader, and side-man who has been based in New Orleans for the past 13 years. His fourth solo album Flowers comes out Nov 1st.
When Kahn moved to New Orleans, he was already a songwriter, but in Louisiana he became a performer—busking up and down Royal Street with jazz and country bands, playing upright bass and guitar until it became a full-time gig. Right now, most of his time is spent playing tenor banjo in the traditional jazz band Tuba Skinny. But it’s been a busy four years for Max Bien Kahn, the solo artist, too.
After putting out his first solo album in 2016, Max and the Martians, he was a session player for many tunes on the now legendary Mashed Potato Records compilations recorded in the Springs of 2017-2018 (his song "Island" was included on Vol 1).
In the fall of 2020, he finished his second album, All the Same. By the time it came out the following spring, Kahn was already nearly done with his next project: When I Cross It Off, which he made with local folk hero Duff Thompson. Somewhere in there, too, he and his now-wife were making COVID-themed songs (called, aptly, the Stay at Home Demos) and releasing them on Bandcamp to raise money for mutual aid. But once he was done with those demos and ready to take the next step, Kahn reached out to his friend, Video Age’s Ross Farbe, about working on some new material together.
Cut to Kahn, Farbe, Howe Pearson, and Cameron Snyder convening at Kahn’s house, setting up a studio for a few days at a time, recording, taking a few weeks off, and then returning to each other and doing the same thing all over again. The quartet did this for an entire year, lasting from extreme lockdown to a post-vaccine world. “The first few sessions we had,” Kahn says, “we had the windows open, doors cracked, we were wearing masks, everyone was really paranoid.” But it wasn’t all nerves. Kahn’s partner, Mik Grantham, would hole up in the back of their house while working on her now-published poetry book, while Kahn and his friends would work on songs in the front of their house. “It was a really nice, healthy thing to see happening during lockdown,” Kahn adds. “To have that time was so rare. That’ll never happen again. We were able to sit on it and not worry about a deadline or anything like that.”
Kahn’s never made an album like Flowers before. When he’s recording in New Orleans, the projects are usually live material or feature a lot of guest performers. It’s how you get a record like When I Cross It Off, which includes folks like Esther Rose, Video Age, Steph Green, Duff Thompson, and Shaye Cohn. This time, though, it was just Kahn, Farbe, Pearson, and Snyder. “It’s a much more intimate process,” Kahn says. And the songs get personal without losing Kahn’s trademark brightness. He’ll always try to be funny about the things that are following him around, be it death, marriage, and whatever triumphs and tragedies fall someplace in-between. Flowers is a rock-steady album that inexplicably documents our humanity and who we become in the wake of loss and on the precipice of falling in love. “When I was writing these songs, I was trying to make it more of a spiritual journey,” he continues, “spiritual not as in God, but in connecting to the planet, connecting to your family, connecting to yourself more.”
—Matt Mitchell
After putting out his first solo album in 2016, Max and the Martians, he was a session player for many tunes on the now legendary Mashed Potato Records compilations recorded in the Springs of 2017-2018 (his song "Island" was included on Vol 1).
In the fall of 2020, he finished his second album, All the Same. By the time it came out the following spring, Kahn was already nearly done with his next project: When I Cross It Off, which he made with local folk hero Duff Thompson. Somewhere in there, too, he and his now-wife were making COVID-themed songs (called, aptly, the Stay at Home Demos) and releasing them on Bandcamp to raise money for mutual aid. But once he was done with those demos and ready to take the next step, Kahn reached out to his friend, Video Age’s Ross Farbe, about working on some new material together.
Cut to Kahn, Farbe, Howe Pearson, and Cameron Snyder convening at Kahn’s house, setting up a studio for a few days at a time, recording, taking a few weeks off, and then returning to each other and doing the same thing all over again. The quartet did this for an entire year, lasting from extreme lockdown to a post-vaccine world. “The first few sessions we had,” Kahn says, “we had the windows open, doors cracked, we were wearing masks, everyone was really paranoid.” But it wasn’t all nerves. Kahn’s partner, Mik Grantham, would hole up in the back of their house while working on her now-published poetry book, while Kahn and his friends would work on songs in the front of their house. “It was a really nice, healthy thing to see happening during lockdown,” Kahn adds. “To have that time was so rare. That’ll never happen again. We were able to sit on it and not worry about a deadline or anything like that.”
Kahn’s never made an album like Flowers before. When he’s recording in New Orleans, the projects are usually live material or feature a lot of guest performers. It’s how you get a record like When I Cross It Off, which includes folks like Esther Rose, Video Age, Steph Green, Duff Thompson, and Shaye Cohn. This time, though, it was just Kahn, Farbe, Pearson, and Snyder. “It’s a much more intimate process,” Kahn says. And the songs get personal without losing Kahn’s trademark brightness. He’ll always try to be funny about the things that are following him around, be it death, marriage, and whatever triumphs and tragedies fall someplace in-between. Flowers is a rock-steady album that inexplicably documents our humanity and who we become in the wake of loss and on the precipice of falling in love. “When I was writing these songs, I was trying to make it more of a spiritual journey,” he continues, “spiritual not as in God, but in connecting to the planet, connecting to your family, connecting to yourself more.”
—Matt Mitchell
Max Bien Kahn, singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, band leader, side man, New Orleans, brand new album "Flowers", dreamy, nostalgic, classic, "Planet of Love", Max and the Martians,
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