Album Notes

What is Fiction? Is it the half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies that certain types of love demand? Stories we make up while walking the city blocks to give identity to people we’ll never know? A man standing before a trunk full of masks, trying them on and discarding them in an attempt to show who he thinks he should be? All the nastiness of existence hidden in the voice of a smooth-talking troubadour? Things left unsaid that will return to burn up our happy little homes? Guilt pretending to be love, love wrapped up in guilt, fear of loneliness above all else?

A decade of songwriting distilled into 15 short songs, Fiction is Putnam Murdock’s exploration of what we talk about when we talk about our lovers, friends and enemies, about loyalty and betrayal, paranoia and lust. Ranging from old-time New Orleans jazz to dense sonic collages, from gentle folk to unrelenting horns, each track stands as a fiction in miniature, working in collaboration with the others to rise up to the larger truth of experience. Collaboration is the key word, as the album represents Murdock standing in front of an ever-growing ragtag cohort of musicians and songwriters dubbed the Insatiables. Slowly building and subtly alluring, Murdock’s debut full-length album is a mosaic of experiences held together by a singer and writer who knows that if we can be saved, it will be Fiction that tells us the lies we need to hear to keep on keeping on.