“Hi! Hey everybody!” Nick Grunerud says at the beginning of The Best Wing of the Psych Ward, his latest release as Underwear. As Grunerud tests the keys on his keyboard, we hear cheering in the background, of a live audience. “Thanks for coming out. It’s been a long time — do I need to mention all this? Is it obvious?” he says with a laugh. “I guess I’ll start.” He then launches into “Been A Long Time,” full of the fractured vocals, glitchy keys, surprising samples, and dance rhythms that have become the vocabulary Grunerud uses to build his songs. “It’s been a long time since I went back in,” he sings. “It’s been a long time since anyone gave me confidence.”
The live audience at the beginning of The Best Wing of the Psych Ward is a signal not just of Grunerud’s own return to performing in front of an audience; it’s also a document of the music starting up again at Never Ending Books, after the storefront community hub closed at the end of 2020 only to reopen a few months later under the management of a new collective dedicated to continuing and growing the artistic legacy of the State Street space as a place not only to trade books, but to gather as poets, musicians, artists, activists, and community organizers.
Since its official reopening in June, the collective has instituted regular hours and thrown a series of events, from clothing swaps and comedy shows to musical performances — in addition to Underwear, the space has hosted an improvised music show featuring Light Upon Blight and Human Blight as well as a night of singer-songwriters Evelyn Gray, Alex Burnet, and Angelica Padua. If the recording of Underwear’s show (which happened on June 19) is any indication, Never Ending Books is truly returning to form as a home for New Haven’s arts scene.
After “Been a Long Time,” Grunerud slides into the shifting textures of “Emergency,” which uses as its lyrical content Grunerud’s stories of the times in his life he’s been to the emergency room, detailed with elliptical humor (“The fourth time I went to the emergency room, you’d never believe it — it was closed”) while the music takes on the accidental cadences of beeping medical equipment. “Deep End” and “Molasses” enter into Underwear’s versions of slow jams, as the harmonies get darker and denser and Grunerud takes his time.
“All to Myself (The Best Wing of the Psyche Ward)” then finds Grunerud setting up a strutting beat and bubbling baseline that lets him set up a chant — “I have it all / now I got it all to myself” — as the beat gets more frantic. The applause at the end gives a hint of the song’s success. “Thank you very much. This means a lot to me,” Grunerud says, as the crowd chants “Underwear! Underwear!” As in live shows throughout the area, the joy people feel of being able to get back together is audible, and palpable.
Visit Underwear’s Bandcamp page to check out The Best Wing of the Psych Ward and other releases, including Party of the Century, which Grunerud released in January. Follow the Never Ending Books Collective’s social media outlets to keep up with its latest activities.
