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Musician and animator Sean Solomon had great expectations. But when his hopes for an abundant world crashed against an unforgiving reality, he decided to feel nothing. For a time, the Los Angeles-born-and-raised singer/songwriter and cartoonist/animator gave into the void, but artistic expression can be a release valve – a way to comprehend the world and build community, which is exactly what Solomon does on his debut solo album ‘The World Is Not Good Enough’, arriving April 17 via his new label home of ANTI- Records.
The album art features Sean’s winking take on a Richard Scarry book cover and mirrors the cognitive dissonance that pervades the album, which seamlessly moves from bare-bones acoustic guitar to a Neutral Milk Hotel-esque cacophony of marching drums and horn blasts. “I was thinking about those books and how they show an idyllic version of the world,” Sean says. “I thought it was kind of funny — the contrast between the title and the images. Like, there's a dog walking a dog on the back cover, an elephant drinking out of a coffee cup with its snout. It was fun to study these children's books and think about what my version would be.”
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, Solomon felt especially drawn to both music and animation and immersed himself in episodes of The Simpsons and illustrated stories by graphic novelist and Ghost World author Daniel Clowes. Meanwhile, Sean was an avid fan of seminal ‘90s and early 2000s punk and alternative acts such as Daniel Johnston, Elliott Smith and Nirvana, the latter of whom he admired for the way they preserved their artistic integrity in the face of global stardom. Adopting his own punk sensibility, Sean and his high school band, the folk-punk Moses Campbell, played all over LA, booking their own shows at coffee shops, houses, and famed DIY venue The Smell. This was followed by playing in the three-piece band Moaning who released two albums on Sub Pop.
After Moaning went on indefinite hiatus in 2023, Solomon thoughtfully wrote and recorded his first solo songs over the better part of two years, culminating in what would become ‘The World Is Not Good Enough’. The contemplative eight tracks feature fellow Sub Pop veteran and Sean’s former roommate Shannon Lay on backing vocals and guitar and producer Jarvis Taveniere (Whitney, Purple Mountains, Waxahatchee), who produced and stood in on bass and some percussion.
“Working with Sean felt brotherly,” says Taveniere. “We’re similar people; we can both lean into being neurotic or anxious, so it was fun to balance each other out ... He was somebody who had a tight vision but let me be playful while also staying sensitive to the material.”
In addition to animating each video he releases, Solomon has also been cooking up comics with his lyrics in word balloons for each new song. He even drew his stage plot and tech rider by hand: “All the stuff that's annoying about being a musician, I'm like, ‘How can I do this in a creative way so that it doesn't feel like work, and it feels like something that's inspired?’” So that he can integrate his animated visuals into his live shows, Solomon has lugged a vintage TV set armed with a VHS input to each venue, the animations and backing tracks running on tape being the only bandmates he shares the stage with.