Maxwell Stern Unveils New Single From Upcoming 'Impossible Sum'

"Brave the trains and meet me across town. We'll go out spinning stories, trying to pull the stars down." sings Stern in this song that is the product of a lot of drunken reminiscing with old friends in new places.

"I think it's really easy to romanticize the past which can be kind of an unhealthy thing to do, to just kind of live in nostalgia-world and think that things aren't ever going to be as good as they were. I think it's ultimately about developing a healthy relationship with your memories but not letting them rule you." Stern says of the track, adding "Remembering that appreciation for the past and hope for the future aren't mutually exclusive and in fact, sometimes they can reinforce each other."

Impossible Sum may be Max's first solo record, but it certainly isn't a solo effort. In addition to Laura Stevenson, a stacked personnel of other longtime friends and collaborators helped Max bring these songs to life, including Adam Beck (Sincere Engineer, Into It. Over It.), Matt Arbogast (The Gunshy), Jon Hernandez (Timeshares) and Kyle Pulley (who produced, engineered, and mixed the album).

For Maxwell Stern, Impossible Sum-his first proper solo record after being in bands like Signals Midwest, Meridian, Timeshares-is an honest-to-God effort to wrangle heartfelt and sometimes confusing feelings of adjustment, displacement, and settling into song. These songs have the kind of heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability that fans of his other bands have come to admire, but presented in a completely unfiltered fashion, existing exactly as they need to be.

And Impossible Sum really is different than anything Max has done before. It's a departure from his emo and pop-punk roots; a collection of songs that exist outside of genre, as if he were contributing to the Great American Songbook. Songs like "Born At the End of the Year," "Going to My Brother's House," and "Pull the Stars Down" certainly have an Americana twang to them (especially with the presence of Magnolia Electric Co.'s Mike "Slo-Mo" Brenner on pedal steel), while "Water Tower" and "Never Ending Equals Sign" sound like the best songs The Weakerthans never wrote. And you can hear other classic influences elsewhere on the album-a dash of Neil Young and Crazy Horse here, some of Tom Petty's cosmic chooglin' there. But for Max, Impossible Sum is, in essence, a rediscovery and reconnection with the roots of songwriting.

Listen to "Pull the Stars Down" here:

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