JPW & Dad Weed Are 'Amassed Like a Rat King'
Psych-pop, folk rock, and '90s style alt-pop await.
Dear reader, I have a new album out today: it’s called Amassed Like a Rat King and it’s a collaboration with my dear friend Zachary Toporek. When I got down to making my first solo album, 2022’s Something Happening/Always Happening, Zach was among the first people I thought of to help me flesh out the songs. Also, my wife, the brilliant Becky Bartkowski, straight up said: you need to collaborate with Zach. She was right. When we finished that record, we just kept making stuff. At first we thought we were making some songs for my next record and some for his, but it didn’t take long to recognize that we were making something else, something distinct from our standard projects.
Stream: Amassed Like a Rat King
Pre-order your green vinyl copy of Amassed Like a Rat King
While the vinyl is delayed a few weeks, the entire album is now streaming via your platform of choice. It features blown-out power pop, off kilter folk rock, one overt Steely Dan homage, and plenty of homespun psychedelia. I’m so happy it’s out in the world and by way of sharing more info, here’s the bio my friend Jesse Locke wrote for us to fill you in on the full story.
After 15 years of collaborative experiences and cheering each other on from various distances, Zachary Toporek and Jason P. Woodbury have finally teamed up on Amassed Like a Rat King. Toporek is best known as the leader of 1970s pop-style collective Dad Weed, while Woodbury fronts spooky desert-jangle combo JPW (alongside his work with the eclectic online music magazine Aquarium Drunkard).
Uniting the strands of their crisscrossing musical sensibilities, the duo’s collaborative debut sprawls across 11 tracks of hypnotic psych-folk, mid-century pop fantasias, and ‘90s alt-pop bliss-outs.
“I’ve always admired the open heartedness Zach brings to his creative work, but moreover, to his entire life,” Woodbury says. “These songs were born out of a lot of tender moments and connection, weekends spent indulging in unguarded joy and musical energy.”
“It’s funny how something so obvious can still be a surprise—Jason’s been my favorite songwriter and singer that I’ve personally known for years, he’s introduced me to some of my favorite music, and we’d even collaborated on a few tunes here and there to great success and delight,” Toporek says. “But it still felt like a revelation when we got into the studio together and started discovering this record.”
Though early sessions were amorphous and exploratory, it didn’t take long for the collaborators to lock into rhythms, often resulting in rapid-fire songwriting, arranging, and production. “We’d finish eight hours in a blink,” Woodbury says. “I’d be writing and editing lyrics while Zach’s getting drums mic’d up. We’re writing harmonies, talking about sound design, recording takes, seemingly all at once. There was a special thing that seemed to happen between us, which felt distinct from our individual projects—a shared ‘third mind’ situation.”
Working in tandem, the duo indulged their shared inspirations, covering a wealth of stylistic ground. This begins with the Wilburys-inspired jangle-pop of the title track—an ode to Woodbury’s rural Arizona upbringing. “When I was in first grade, my family moved to a small cotton town called Coolidge, and ‘Amassed’ is drawn directly from memories I have of being very young, hanging around my family’s machine shop and watching for the train to come rolling by.”
From here, JPW & Dad Weed drift into driving ’70s soul-rock on the Toporek-led “Frighting,” unabashed but covert ’90s alt-poppers like “Everybody’s Talking (Again)” and “So Brighty There,” and psych-folk epics like “It’s Happening.” The latter detours from Flaming Lips-style orchestral-pop into an alternate dimension Everly Brothers cut before, a lush funk break takes us back to where we started again. And while the music is light, the songs probe into deep questions about identity, inner knowing, cosmic expanses, and what love—the big kind of love, the love that helps create energy between people, partnerships, and communities—looks and acts like in the face of the vast unknown.
“We’re so lucky it’s crazy,” Toporek says. “Jason writes more songs than anyone else I know and has such a zeal for creating that he’d gladly put out voice memos of his songs. I’m lucky if I write a few songs a year lately, but I’m a studio rat who loves discovering the song as I record it. So there’s a counterbalancing going on with us that’s helpful and productive, but the magic really comes down to the fact that, once we hear something, we both get so excited and chase it down as fast as we can.”
Self-produced and recorded entirely by Toporek and Woodbury, the songs were then passed over to Sam Cohen (Dangermouse, Karen O) for mixing. With his ear steering the ride, the record comes together to form a kaleidoscopic whole. Imagining an alternate reality where classic soul oldies, organ-drenched prog breaks, and glassy-eyed soft-rock filtered onto AM radio airwaves, Toporek and Woodbury have located a liminal space where timelines blur and moments exist forever.