Like many of his favorite songwriters (John Hartford, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy),

Izaak Opatz is an ungulate in life’s winter pasture, chewing on and metabolizing

disappointment, heartbreak, and the other tough stuff into enjoyable musical

carbohydrates. A compulsive metaphorager (and inveterate wordplayboy), Opatz

breaks it all down with enzymes of wry humor, thoughtful simile and close observation -

a therapeutic process of narrativizing his own life that, almost as a byproduct, turns out

savory nuggets of literate, confessional pop.

 

Where 2018’s Mariachi Static drew from Opatz’s fragmented love life as a seasonal

Park Service employee and resonated especially with the sensitive dirtbag set, Extra

Medium, his latest release, splits time between romantic Hindenburgs across his native

Montana, up the East Coast, and in faraway Los Angeles. Montana and LA especially

decorate the album, supplying wells of metaphor and scene-making, and as characters

in their own right - LA’s alternately charming (“In the Light of a Love Affair”) and

discomfiting (“East of Barstow”), and, in “Big Sandy”, Montana evolves from setting to

subject as the girl’s feelings he traverses it to see prove less than his own feelings for

the state.

 

In LA, Opatz learned from and worked alongside Jonny Fritz at Dad Country Leather,

and met bandmates and Extra Medium collaborators Malachi DeLorenzo (drums,

producer, engineer) and Dylan Rodrigue (multi-instrumentalist, producer). He now lives

in Missoula, Montana, where he runs his own custom leather shop, is writing the next

album, and pursuing a master's in journalism.