‘Nobody Lives Here Anymore’ is the haunted reverie of an American landscape in-and-out of Max Clarke’s mind. Recorded between May and November 2019 in Memphis, Tennessee, the album is a snow globe of the mid-twentieth-century’s popular music filled with jangling guitars, honkey-tonk pianos, and Telstar organs.
Max immediately started writing material for his sophomore LP after an extensive eighteen-months of touring. Mining his life-long devotion to the lost American songbook for inspiration, he stockpiled nearly thirty new songs by the time he flew to Memphis to work with producer Matt Ross-Spang at Sam Phillips Recording Studio. Unlike earlier works that were meticulously demoed, Max opted for rough drafts to capture something more immediate and honest. Most of the initial takes were tracked live with Noah Bond on drums, while Max sang and played rhythm guitar. Max then built lush arrangements around these intimate performances. A skeleton crew of friends and Memphis all-stars were called in to lay down pedal steel, sax, and strings. When all was said and done, they had recorded 17 new cosmic Americana gems.