The perils of art-making are well documented. One day your soaring with creative energy, and the next your facing crippling self-doubt. And that says nothing about the postpartum depression that follows successful output. It’s no wonder, then, that it takes incredible emotional fortitude to be an artist, as Ethan P. Flynn makes obvious on his new LP B-Sides & Rarities: Volume 1 out now on the UK label Young Turks.
In a recent press release for the album, the musician explains that the collection was finished as a mixtape two and a half years ago when Flynn was just nineteen years old. Having signed a record deal, he was excited to release the effort, but a nervous breakdown (unrelated, he explains) and a trip to Odessa in Ukraine for a month intervened. Upon return, he had second doubts about the collection, shelving it for a year until finally putting it up on Bandcamp as a way of giving context to his newer more upcoming efforts.
Discussing the LP’s title, Flynn explains:
“I chose the name b-sides as like a joke referring to how I wanted to distance myself from this music and also implying that I was an old af man with a long history as a recording artist.”
Physical copies were put out by the Japanese label Big Love, and the musician even toured the country upon its release. The success of that endeavor seems to have given the artist the courage to further release his effort, and it is now available for streaming/download via Young Turks. Marked by Flynn’s expansive musical imagination and his stream of consciousness compositional style, B-Sides & Rarities: Volume 1 is as personal and heartfelt as it is idiosyncratic and unique.
