Kevin Bronson on November 15th, 2018

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Five years ago, in the wake of the demise of his band Poor Moon, Ian Murray bolted his hometown of Seattle and moved to Los Angeles. “I had given up on pushing myself creatively,” he says. “I took a job at a restaurant and tried to stay focused on reclaiming a part of myself that I had lost. It was during this time that a voice I had been suppressing began to re-emerge. I started writing songs and recording them in my house. I gave the project a name that sounded partially like an old blues/country singer and partially like an insult.”

And Butch Bastard was born.

On Friday, he independently releases “I Am Not a Man,” an album he calls “the sound of a guy getting his ass kicked while lashing out at the world, love, convention, guns, gentrification, pharmaceuticals, entitlement and more, before ultimately turning the scrutiny back to where it is most needed: himself.”

Featuring contributions from Josh Tillman (aka Father John Misty), Mitchell Rowland (Harry Styles) and Jonathan Wilson, “I Am Not a Man” is rough-edged and lovable — as only melodic, even medicinal, misanthropy can be. Take “Hot Blooded, Heavy Handed Blues” and picture Murray, sitting his his house, amid the existential apoplexy that propels the album.

“I wrote ‘Hot Blooded, Heavy Handed Blues’ right smack dab in the middle of my biennial nervous breakdown,” he remembers. “I was overworked and overwhelmed. I was relatively new to Los Angeles, which is a city that can really chew you up and spit you out. The person I was in Seattle was dying off, and the life I was establishing in L.A. didn’t hold much promise. I was having panic attacks all the time, and I may or may not have been prescribed some medications that were only exacerbating the problem. I got to a point where I just had to let the meltdown happen. I had to let myself burn to the ground and whatever survived the fire, I could build myself back up with. In the midst of that fire, you scream, you cry, and you try to grab onto whoever you can in hopes that they will pull you out, but in the end you’re alone with it.”

He adds: “This song is special to me because it demonstrates the strength of creative expression. Songwriting is the best therapy. If you can take all your darkness and turn it into music, it exorcises the demon. I still had a long road to get my mind right, but the moment I finished this song, I knew that I was going to come out of it stronger than I was before.”

||| Stream: “Hot Blooded, Heavy Handed Blues”

||| Previously: “Butchie, Baby” “Sloppy Seconds”