“It’s an observation song, we’re reflecting, we’re looking,” Jesse Malin says of his new track “State of the Art,” which announces the New York songwriter’s upcoming double album, ‘Sad and Beautiful World.’ Listen here.
may not drive much in his Lower East Side stomping grounds, but the New York City songwriter often puts his listeners in the passenger seat. Onstage he tells a story about riding around as a kid with his absentee father, swerving around drunks in the street who, his dad said, “had too many sodas.” And he can write a book about his early days driving a moving van for the Manhattan elite.
. “I always loved being in the passenger seat as a kid driving with my mom, listening to the radio. I found something in that — something about that forward motion is very soothing for the brain, very freeing, and I was able to figure out my problems. So this song is like a window view at what’s been going on in the world.”