Brooklyn, NY
Runnner
When it all burns down, who do you want by your side? This is the core question behind “Love Songs From the Hottest Summer on Record,” the fourth album by New York-based artist and producer Noah Weinman, aka Runnner.
It was deep COVID when Runnner captured the hearts of millions of anxious optimists with his incisive lyrics and lush, emotive instrumentation. He’d already been writing and performing as Runnner for a few years, but his music became particularly resonant as people found themselves trapped in their houses amidst a historically unprecedented global pandemic. Songs like “Ur Name on a Grain of Rice” and “Eggshell” captured feelings of listlessness, uncertainty, and existential angst in the soft warmth of horn- and banjo-tinged bedroom rock.
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At the same time, Noah has been making a name for himself as a songwriter and producer in both indie and pop circles, working with the likes of Gigi Perez (including the chart-topping “Sailor Song”), Alyssa Grace, Ha Vay, Odie Leigh, Skullcrusher, Field Medic and many more. Now that his productions have captured the hearts of billions, he’s continuing to expand his unique sonic universe with a timely and topical new Runnner LP.
“Love Songs From the Hottest Summer on Record” finds Weinman returning to his bedroom to interrogate the next frontier of existential peril: how to create a meaningful life in the shadow of a looming climate crisis and the simmering embers of late capitalism.
“The gloomy and pessimistic songs came first,” says Weinman. “They were cathartic for a while, but then I just felt like I was digging a deeper hole, so I challenged myself to explore the brighter spots and that’s when I felt the album really start to coalesce. If it was going to be so concerned with fear and loss, it should also be balanced by the things that I was living for.”
Across 13 songs, Weinman considers his priorities in an increasingly unstable world. How do you balance the nomadic life of a touring musician with the desire to be close to the people who matter most? How do we express the full weight and complexity of our emotions to the people we love? Through his dread, Weinman finds solace in the community he’s built with like-minded people: his family, his friends, his bandmates, and even the artists he works with as a producer. From the cheerful optimism of “Want to Want to” to the quiet surrender of “U2BF,” the album asks: What are you gonna do when it stops?
