Gay Meat

Bed of Every (2022) is the debut EP from Gay Meat, the solo project of the North Carolina-based rock musician Karl Kuehn (Museum Mouth, Kississippi, Say Anything). Following a run of woozy one-off singles, the new EP features five unassuming bangers that meld well-worn hallmarks of indie and emo with Kuehn’s self-deprecating wit and brazen sentimentality. Coming in at just under 13 minutes, Bed of Every offers listeners a brief yet enthralling glimpse into the private world of a gifted songwriter with a lot on his mind.

Back in 2018, when his late mother began dealing with the fallout from a serious brain injury, Kuehn realized that he needed a home for his most personal writing. Gay Meat became that outlet, an alias through which he could release songs that felt too broody or intimate to mesh with the collaboration-centric material he was accustomed to recording. Kuehn is still working on the first Gay Meat full-length, which will grapple with the destabilizing memories surrounding his mother’s diagnosis and hospitalization. Luckily, the Bed of Every EP contains enough anxious charm and big-hearted hooks to hold us over while we wait.