National Diet - The King in Yellow (2025)

The genesis of this album was really based around the piano as I felt more compelled towards that instrument and less to guitar. The themes of the songs mostly center around a breakup of a long relationship. I had trouble processing the breakup and wasn't sure how I felt on a conscious level. So my feelings are wrapped here in allegory based around themes of Gothic literature: Madness, cults, multiple personalities, and sociopathy through the lens of Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow and Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos as well as American Psycho and Fight Club, among others.

These songs were written between 2022-24, recorded in 2024, and mixed and mastered 2024-25. I am fortunate to have on this recording two great artists on guest vocals, Cheer-Accident's Thymme Jones and The Mercury Tree's Ben Spees who also wrote additional vocals. I'm also blessed to have Nicole McCabe again on saxophone and Ellie Dick on cello. This is also the first album to have a consistent band with James Greene joining us on bass and my producer Colin Doherty on live guitar (he'll record guitar on the next album).