Michaela Anne

In early 2022, exiled from his Los Angeles home and reeling from an intense breakup, actor-writer-director-songwriter Josh Radnor sought refuge in close friends and good music. He drove to Nashville, Tennessee with his dog, Nelson, and roughly fifty original songs in tow.

Finding Peace and Creating Eulogy

There, despite the heartache that initially led him South, Radnor found deep peace, immersing himself in what would eventually become his debut solo album, Eulogy: Volume I + II. The process of sifting through the emotional complexities of love, loss, death, identity, grief, and redemption grew into a powerful outlet for healing. It also resulted in twenty-three beautifully minimal, meditative, and stirring folk-Americana tracks—a double-album debut, the first volume of which is set for release on November 17th, 2023 via all streaming platforms.

Album Overview: Eulogy: Volume I

Eulogy: Volume I is a garden of carefully-chiseled gravestones—a moment of respite in a frantic, overwhelming world. Produced and engineered by Nashville friends Jeremiah Dunlap, Cory Quintard, and Kyle Cox, the album's dozen original tracks exude the unquestionable sturdiness characteristic of classic Americana—these songs tell you stories, make you stomp, and break your heart. Simple, anthemic melodies are laced with electronic elements and idiosyncratic twists, drawing comparisons to 1960s Laurel Canyon artists as well as modern folk acts like Edward Sharpe.

Thematic Depth in the Writing Process

At some point in the writing process, I realized that each track on this album is, in one way or another, about death, Radnor says. If not a literal death, then a metaphorical one. I was using these songs to honor and then bury parts of myself that were no longer serving me. The album is a song cycle of mini-funerals.

Tracks and Emotions

Many of the songs on Eulogy: Volume I serve as goodbyes of sorts: a letting-go of people, places, emotions, and ideas. The driving, plucky opening single, titled Red after American poet Robert Bly's colorful treatise on the phases of masculinity, celebrates the fierce no-fucks-giving spirit of adolescence, while charming and rhythmic wordplay subverts a deeper emotion in the deconstructed love song NYC.

Songwriting Style and Connection

Throughout the new album, Radnor's grounded and intimate songwriting style blends the timeless art of existential questioning with relatable, down-to-earth narratives, in the vein of acts like Nick Drake, Alexi Murdoch, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. Spanning the spectrum of human emotion—from rage to joy, grief to hope—the tracks seem to speak to one another like bodies in a room, alternately concealing, revealing, or connecting various thematic threads.

Vulnerability and Storytelling

Backed by sometimes rowdy, sometimes sparse instrumentation, there's an alluring sense of vulnerability woven throughout the album, each track well-attuned to the emotion that sparked its creation. All my work is a process of storytelling, in one form or another, says Radnor. After spending so much of my career telling stories that last ninety minutes or nine years, I'm finding some real joy these days in being more economical, telling three to four-minute stories.