Rostam Keeps Doing The Work

“I don't want to ruin the surprise, but it's this thing that the biggest people in pop are doing across the board, and I thought it would be fun to try to model my release after this new standard, to use a term, of art.”Looking casual in a black tank top, he ties it all together, kind of: “The Lucinda Williams covers may be involved — may or may not be.”What might be taken as blowing smoke from a more trollish, less credentialed artist comes across as Rostam doing the work in real time and being careful not to share until the job is done. “I guess the reason that I wanted to make this record where the sax was like a character in the ensemble is because I do have strong opinions about the way I want sax to sound on records and what kinds of things I want sax to reference.”Therefore, Solomon’s saxophone feels like a second voice throughout Changephobia, a duetter who reappears to guide Rostam’s sedate rhythms, as on lead single “Unfold You,” or adding an ethereal gauze to moony closer “Starlight.” Solomon also lit up Haim’s “Summer Girl” with its mellow homage to Lou Reed in 2019. On “To Communicate,” one of its most cathartic tracks, Rostam sings a mouthful for a pop song — “You said a discrepancy at the start may account for a conflict between us” — that came to him fully formed while sitting at the piano.“I find a lot of times the deepest songs that I write are when I turn my brain off and just allow it to drive, or allow this little character in the back of my brain to be behind the wheel,” he says. “You can read the lyrics, you can follow along to the lyrics, you can read the sax solos, and follow along to the sax solos.”You can also learn how to play his big-throated folk song “In a River,” courtesy of a YouTube tutorial made by Rostam himself.