Zach Gill’s new solo record might say “solo,” but don’t expect a man on a mountain with an acoustic guitar and a journal of heartbreak. “At first I thought I was all by myself,” he says, “but suddenly I had a lot of help. Like anything but a solo record in the end.”
That contradiction pretty much sums up Life in the Multiverse, an album as wide-eyed as it is introspective, written from the perspective of a father, a bandmate, a festival dad, a recovering jazz band kid, and a guy who’s recently decided that maybe We Built This City isn’t such a bad song after all. “A lot of these songs were ones the band liked but didn’t feel like band songs,” he says. “They kept gnawing at me. So I made the record.”
Gnawing is right. This album is practically chewed through with songs about fatherhood. There’s “Ode to the Father,” “Eliza Grace,” and “Chuck and the Nomads,” a track about Gill’s own dad in the late ’60s ordering a guitar from a Sears catalog and becoming an Ohio legend just for plugging it in. “He said people came from miles around just to see the thing,” Gill recalls. “It was like he had a spaceship.”
If that sounds sentimental, don’t worry—there’s a twinkle of mischief in every memory. His daughter Jane sings backup on the record, but his younger daughter Ellie needed a little push. “She asked, ‘When are you gonna write a song about me?’” he says. “It’s like dessert—you gotta make it even.” She’s currently been tricked into believing ALO’s cover of “Happy Together” is about her. “I’m gonna ride that line as long as I can.”
And then there’s “Joy (Reclaimed),” the result of a weekend at Outside Lands that doubled as a generational therapy session with his teenage daughter. They didn’t hang out, but they did ride home together each night talking music. “She’s into stuff I’m not into at all,” he laughs, “but we met in the middle. That whole idea of guilty pleasures just dissolved.”
Gill has thoughts about guilty pleasures. Deep ones. “What one person hears as sophisticated, another hears as bragging,” he muses. “We’re all just defending our little piece of emotional territory. Even Steely Dan.” His daughter forced him to confront his own musical prejudices. “You hear We Built This City enough times and suddenly it’s like, ‘Wait, this is kind of great?’”
This theme—shifting perception, rediscovery, the romance of things you weren’t there for—runs throughout the record. “I think we all try to discard what came before us until we realize the younger generation is picking it back up and finding beauty in it again,” he says. “It’s like that While We’re Young movie, where the hipster band names themselves after a yogurt commercial from the ’80s, and Ben Stiller’s like, ‘Hey, that’s mine!’”
Midway through, the album swerves into more ambiguous territory. “There’s a stretch—from ‘Chuck’ through ‘Ride This Sucker Out’—that’s kind of an arc,” Gill says. “Not political exactly, but it was all sparked by a political fight I had with my dad. We were yelling. That never happens anymore. But it was all so loud and confusing back then—I just went inward.”
Cue the Carl Jung references. “I got into this alchemy idea,” he explains. “Not like turning lead into gold, but metaphorical alchemy—transforming thoughts, transforming yourself. Songs like ‘Alchemy’ and ‘Up From Down Below’ live in that space.”
And then there’s “Ride This Sucker Out,” the unofficial thesis statement. “It’s not defeatist, it’s pragmatic,” Gill says. “You can do a lot in your circle, but also, sometimes? You just ride the sucker out.”
Zach Gill is still doing a little bit of everything—solo shows, ALO gigs, and playing in Jack Johnson’s band, toggling between them like someone who accidentally double-booked his life. “It was discombobulating at first,” he admits. “Now I’ve got a rhythm.”
You can hear the interview above and then check out the lyric video to "Joy" below!
