Josh Gilligan’s wise, full-hearted debut opens where most albums might end: with an epiphany. “It takes a lot to be anything at all,” he sings on the chorus of “Anything,” over a bed of sympathetic piano chords and a shuffling rhythm section. The sentiment sounds straightforward, but the Nashville singer-songwriter finds new implications every time he sings that line: Simply existing in the world requires strength, endurance, determination, even courage. This is not the album’s cathartic climax or the culmination of his process of self-discovery. Rather, it’s Gilligan’s opening salvo. That idea is the starting point for this somber, yet hopeful collection of songs.
Party of One collects the wisdom Gilligan gleaned from a long period of deep sadness, self-doubt, and confusion. There are songs about separation, internal conflicts, creative disappointments, all of which added up to a pervasive melancholy in his late 20s and early 30s. He’d spent nearly a decade gigging around Nashville, balancing other jobs adjacent to the music industry with his own musical pursuits. “I wasn’t expecting to feel so hollowed out after my twenties, and I was wondering if I still wanted to make music. But I felt like I owed it to myself to give it another try, even though in the back of my mind I’m thinking, What can I add to the conversation? Why would anyone want to listen to what I have to say? ‘Anything’ came out of that, and it’s been a good message to live with. A lot of people think that if they’re not doing something super ambitious and highly visible, that means they’re doing something wrong or they’re not being brave enough. But it takes so much bravery to do anything at all.”
It took a lot of bravery—and a departure from his normal writing process—for Gilligan to put some of these darker themes to music, but it has paid off with an album that discusses serious subject matter with a gentle humor and a warm generosity, that takes no chord or phrase for granted. It is bleak, but only so it can be even more optimistic. “There are themes of depression and inertia, but it’s about coming to know myself enough to understand that this sadness is not the end. It’s about what you do with that sadness and how you make your days meaningful. It’s not a downer record, but it has a certain gravity.”
To convey such heavy ideas, Gilligan drew from the ‘70s pop and soft rock of his childhood, creating a sound that resonates with personal references: the graceful melodicism of Paul Simon, the restless experimentation of Todd Rundgren, the emotional directness of James Taylor. “My mom was raising five kids—I was the middle child—and she would take us on long drives to make us sleepy. And she would play Wings, America, Christopher Cross. Instead of rejecting her music, I embraced all of it. That’s the stuff I’m thinking about when I make music. It completely formed my sensibilities. My mom inadvertently crafted the palette of Party of One.”
Gilligan spent years recording, mixing, and even sequencing another record, but something didn’t sit right. He started to second-guess himself, doubting whether his songs said what he needed to say. “I didn’t hate that record, but I wasn’t in love with it either. It just didn’t feel like me.” It took bravery to set it aside and start again from scratch. In 2022 he spent a month in California, savoring the change of scenery and working with a different set of musicians. In one memorable afternoon he and Jacob Jeffries (who plays keyboards for Vulfpeck) wrote a song called “Tight Rope,” which is now the album’s first single. It’s a gentle ballad with chiming guitars, shimmering keyboards, and lyrics about how falling off the tight rope gets you back down to earth. It was a breakthrough. “Honestly it felt less like doing a co-write and more like finding a long-lost member of my musical family. I remember thinking, This is how I want the album to sound. I built everything else around that song. It came out like a sneeze, but the others came together with more time and care.”
Back in Nashville, Gilligan moved into a friend’s home studio, living in the loft and climbing down to record whenever an idea presented itself. “There were a lot of fun bursts of inspiration, then I would let things rest for a little bit, then I would add a little more. You hear a different life in things that you didn’t hear before.” About half of Party of One is, well, a party of one: Gilligan alone in the studio with his malaise, playing all the instruments and assembling them into full, intimate songs. The other half features a backing band comprised of drummer Soren Burkum and two members of the Nashville instrumental group Disappearing Teeth Trick, guitarist Chris Peranich and bassist Ian Shaw. “I saw Disappearing Teeth Trick play a house show a few years ago and loved them. We’ve become close friends since then. It was special to get in that room and play with them and feel that transaction of energy. I felt like a kid going outside to play. We tracked it very quickly, using a lot of first takes and a lot of live emotion.”
They worked to stay open to moments of serendipity and surprise, which led to the creation of the album’s most unusual—and most disarmingly beautiful—song, “Free.” An airy composition full of empty spaces and instruments that come in and out of focus, it features no vocals but offers a curious transition from side one to side two. It began as a bit of noodling: “Chris from Disappearing Teeth Trick started playing this little melody, so I armed the mics and hit record. I jumped on keys, and Ian and Soren hopped in on bass and drums. You can hear Chris calling out the chords in the background. That was the first time we ever played the song, but I thought it represented this really poetic sense of coming together and falling apart.”
On the spare closer “Everything,” Gilligan declares, “I don’t want to wait till I’m old to say you’re everything, everything to me.” The moment is disarming for its clarity, even if the “you” he’s addressing is ambiguous. He could be speaking to a single listener, or to an audience at a venue, or to the musicians who helped him make Party of One. Or he could be talking to the song itself, to music as a lifesaving and life-sustaining pursuit. Creating these songs not only gave him a healthier perspective on a bleak period of his life, but it also reaffirmed his creative mission. “I’m not that kid anymore, so doing this in my thirties has to be a conscious decision. I’ve had people tell me they’ve felt some of these same things, so putting them out there in these songs, as painful as it might be, feels like a responsibility. A part of it will always be hard, but I know I want to do it forever.”
