Kevin Bronson on November 21st, 2018

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Nick Flessa has one foot in his native Midwest and the other in L.A. He has one foot in the art world and the other in music. And in the latter world, he has one foot in country and one in indie-rock.

This summer, not long after the CalArts film graduate’s debut solo exhibition, “Death Production: The Archive of Janna Flessa (Executed by Nick Flessa)” closed, he released his first solo album, “Flyover States.” It’s a record on which Flessa brings his weighty, droll baritone to songs alternately free-wheeling and solemn, with both a sense of humor and perspective. Any number of great country and folk narrators come to mind in his weathered delivery and witty turns of phrase. “This record is sort of a vision of a Midwesterner moved to Los Angeles trying to depict some literary sensibility of the Midwest with Los Angeles as the template and subject,” says Flessa, who grew up in Cincinnati. “Sonically, my voice is centered, but the arrangements are sprawling and indicate a more expansive environment.”

Among the highlights is “Glendale,” which opens crash-bang-twang with “Won’t you bury me in Glendale / between the Pep Boys and porno store …,” along with the poignant “Warning” (written in the aftermath of the death of his mother), the trad-country gallop of “Let Her Go” and the beautiful duet with Lucy LaForge, first revealed in 2015 as a song by Flessa’s band Wash, “There Is Mercy.” Working out of a garage in L.A., the album was produced by Neil Wogensen (of Valley Queen), who with Flessa coined the descriptive “bedroom Nashville” for its sound. It features contributions from J.D. Carerra (pedal steel) and Richard Valitutto (piano), along with the former members of Wash.

This month, Flessa released two new songs, “Bare Fists” and “Roped,” both produced by Mario Luna. The former, Flessa says, “expresses the bittersweet satisfaction of saying goodbye to the habits, friends and circumstances that hold us back (while at the same time feeling some nostalgia about them).” It’s a little reminiscent of the Man in Black, only without the jail time and with the chops to play a trippy saxophone solo. The Western-noir “Roped” is “a spooky letter of complaint to an ex’s ex,” Flessa explains, “wherein I realize I’m also my ex’s ex, and the person I imagined to be my adversary was just my own projection.” Got that? Like all of Flessa’s songs, it’s worth following along.

||| Stream: “Bare Fists” and “Roped”

||| Also: Watch the videos for three songs from “Flyover States”