B-Side Guys

Andrew Spencer Goldman lets the pump organ float in overdriven and staticky, a distant siren calling from somewhere inside the subconscious. “These Notes Don’t Break” operates as controlled descent, a downward voyage into mental health struggles that refuses easy resolution or clean production choices. Co-produced with Adam Ollendorff, who’s worked with Will Hoge, Kacey Musgraves, and Lera Lynn, the track represents Goldman’s first Fulton Lights recording since 2018’s Moonwalking into the Future—breaking a long fallow period where song ideas piled up but couldn’t or wouldn’t be finished.

The production builds atmosphere through friction. That Fennesz-tinged pump organ buzzes and pulses beneath layers of pedal steel and baritone guitar, creating a hazy mystery that evokes Low’s glacial intensity and Jeff Tweedy’s willingness to let discomfort linger. There’s no rush toward clarity here; the track understands that exploration of the subconscious doesn’t follow linear paths or resolve neatly. Goldman’s devotion to texture and the unexpected—a consistent thread through previous Fulton Lights releases—finds its perfect application in material about descending into internal struggle.

The instrumentation choices reveal a producer and songwriter finding new depth with age. Rather than filling space with conventional rock moves, Goldman lets atmospheric elements do emotional work that more straightforward approaches might bulldoze through. The pedal steel doesn’t offer comfort; it adds to the sense of something unmoored, floating untethered. The baritone guitar grounds without stabilizing. Everything pulses with a particular kind of tension that comes from fighting encroaching threats—in this case, threats to mental health and sense of self.

Goldman credits returning collaborator TJ Lipple from Aloha with snapping him out of creative paralysis. After years of feeling stuck, Lipple’s matter-of-fact suggestion to just book studio time functioned as “a welcome slap in the face from an old friend.” The songs that emerged from those sessions, mixed by Grammy-nominated Tony Maimone at Studio G, feel richer for the break—the sound of someone who’s spent time in the dark and returned with clearer vision about what needs to be said and how to say it.

“These Notes Don’t Break” arrives on the EP Well the Night Has Come, set for November 7th release. The collection explores themes of preservation and protection against various encroaching threats—to attention, creativity, family, future. This particular track focuses inward, documenting what it feels like when the threat comes from inside your own mind. Goldman doesn’t offer solutions or suggest breaking through leads anywhere triumphant. Instead, he creates a sonic space that acknowledges the reality of descending without pretending descent is the same as defeat.