We are super excited to share this new upcoming release via Amuse Records from Noah Kittinger’s solo project Bedroom. Noah’s been releasing music under the Bedroom moniker since 2012 and has amassed a large following on Spotify, with previous releases being covered by Interview Mag, DIY, and more. He’s releasing his upcoming LP in April through Amuse and is kicking it off with lead single “Better Friends” – out March 17th
Thread, Noah Kittinger’s fourth LP under the Bedroom moniker, is the album the singer/songwriter & producer has strived to release throughout his career. It’s a stunning portrait of self-exploration, as Kittinger aims to find his place in life after a tumultuous period both in his personal life and artistry.
“This record is the result of many years of dedication to the craft and to continuing this career, of me being pretty creatively lost for a long time and then finding my new self in music that I was searching for,” says Kittinger. “It’s a testament to independent artistry. [Bedroom] isn’t an industry-designed project. ‘Thread’ is a very organic body of work that is the result of many years of just pushing.”
In 2020, Kittinger sought to break away from his writer’s block and cut ties with business relationships that were limiting his creative path, while also confronting personal issues that halted his musical efforts and severely affected his mental health. To take a breather from the turmoil, he decided to take a trip late in the summer to Nantahala, North Carolina with his best friend Blake Parker, who co-engineered Thread. “There was just so much chaos going on in our lives and in the world. We both were like, ‘Man, let’s get the fuck out of the city for a while, go somewhere, just make music and see what happens.'”
What emerged from that initial trip was “Better Friends,” the lead single for Thread. On the song, Kittinger gets brutally honest, admitting to himself that he wishes he had friends to look out for him instead of encouraging toxic coping mechanisms during times of struggle. Melodically, the track stands out for its introduction of pedal steel into Kittinger’s music, injecting southern-tinged flair to the record.
Kittinger recalls that after asking his friend Bennett Littlejohn to play pedal steel on the song, it shaped his vision for the LP. “Once he sent that stuff over, I was like, ‘There’s something here. This is exciting to me, these textures and elements.’ That helped birth this whole path of making a new Bedroom album.”
Serendipitously, during his trip to North Carolina, a search on Craigslist for an East Nashville home with a built-in recording studio space was fruitful, with Kittinger finding the perfect spot to work on Thread. Without the confines of the previous recording methods that lent him his moniker, Kittinger found endless possibilities for where to take his music. “Before finding this house and studio I was relying on other studios around town. I wasn’t working with the one microphone and a laptop set up anymore, but I was also still limited in the way that I didn’t have a full space of my own. I was trying to get somewhere in the confines of other people’s time and space. Finding this house and building out my own dream studio was crucial for this record.” Besides the addition of pedal steel, he also covers new musical ground that wasn’t present in previous material, including elements of jazz and hip-hop.
While self-producing in an at-home studio allowed Kittinger to reach the depths of his creativity, it was during his trips back to North Carolina that Thread began to take shape. “I think that there was just something about removing myself from that frequency that’s within a city, and just literally being in a house in the middle of nowhere, and just having a very limited amount of time and stuff to work on, that I think is what really brings out the important stuff,” explains Kittinger.
In that time in serene isolation, Kittinger realized that to break his writer’s block, he had to process the emotional pain he’d experienced over the past couple of years through his writing, leading to his most intimate and compelling songwriting yet.
“It was like a choice of [saying] ‘This is what I’m going through right now.’ This record is me very bluntly talking about what it is that I’m going through. I would say it is my most personal record,” says Kittinger. He half-jokingly notes that after Thread, he doesn’t want to make anything as personal as this again. “I just kind of want to make ambient, instrumental music for a while. I don’t really want to sing or say anything after this project for a second,” he says.
One of the most poignant songs born out of Kittinger’s trips to North Carolina was “Topton,” a somber acoustic track where the musician questions how to move past his toxic habits while struggling with his mental health. “With ‘Topton’ it’s like, ‘Am I more than what I’m doing right now? Is there anything else? Is this what I’m turning into? I don’t know right now.’ I was just really there in the middle of it all,” he explains.
Kittinger has been making music as Bedroom for the past decade. He recorded much of his music from the comfort of his bedroom as a teen, including “In My Head,” a single originally released in January of 2013 (re-released in 2017) that organically became a hit online and was introduced to a wider audience when it became a viral sensation on TikTok in 2021. Though Kittinger is proud that his early work resonated so strongly with fans, he now wants to reintroduce Bedroom as a “more mature and better version” of himself as an artist. “I’ve grown up a lot as a person and as an artist, and I think this record reflects that. I’m proud of that,” says Kittinger.
