Jacob Kulick to Release New Album 'Nostalgia Is A Thing Of The Past'

Emerging Nashville-based singer, songwriter and producer Jacob Kulick is set to release his new album Nostalgia Is a Thing of the Past on May 31 via ENCI Records. Having been born with sensorineural hearing loss in both ears, these songs find Jacob exploring the human condition through mesmerizing hooks and forthright lyrics.

In conjunction, Jacob premieres the album's lead single “Motel 6” alongside a David Patino-directed video. Written in 2019, the new track strikes a balance between urgent and wistful, where the finger-picked acoustic guitar blends with subtly cascading keyboards. 

Of the song, Jacob recalls, “I wrote this song when I was leaving the life I had previously built to start something brand new with someone I fell in love with without warning. I realized that I didn't care if I was living out of hotel rooms my whole life, I knew I needed to see this new found love through, no matter how it changed my life. Hotels were also our first real home while touring and during COVID, so the inspiration for the song came naturally.” 

On Nostalgia Is a Thing of the Past, Jacob pared back the big rock sound of his earlier work, shed the impulse to play all the songs himself and even dropped KULICK, the persona he had adopted during his stint on a major label. Comprising eight songs, Nostalgia Is a Thing of the Past is his first album as Jacob Kulick in nearly a decade.

“It was probably the fastest album I've ever made, and the most involved I felt, but also the least hands-on,” explains Jacob. “Søren Hansen and I co-produced the album and we decided to do it with a full band. It was Elle King's band, three guys, and we recorded all together in single takes and then I did the vocals. That's how I used to record with my first band when I got out of high school: you play it together once and you're done.” 

Born in West Penn Township, PA, Jacob started writing songs at the age of 13 as a way to process bullying from his peers and cope with an isolated upbringing. As he got older, songwriting helped Jacob make sense of the world around him, or at least his place in it.

After college, a mutual acquaintance connected him with an executive at RCA Records, which eventually led to a record deal. The label had a notion of what his music should sound like and while it didn't always match Jacob's vision, he was willing to play the game.

Having established himself as KULICK with an EP and handful of singles for RCA, it took a minute for the singer to shift his creative focus after switching to the indie label Enci Records for the KULICK albums Yelling in a Quiet Neighborhood in 2020 and Everyone I Know Will Die in 2022.

“I was still kind of hanging on to the RCA image, so this record was me letting go of everything about that and tuning into what I want to do,” Jacob says. “The more I did that, the more I realized people were supporting me doing it.”

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