Andrew W.K. surprise-releases Temptation to Exist, a jazz album he plays alone

Andrew W.K. has released a jazz album and told almost nobody. Temptation to Exist is ten instrumentals with no vocals, and the credit says he played keys, guitar, bass, drums and several other instruments himself. The man whose catalog is anthems about partying has gone quiet in public, and it suits him.

Wilkes-Krier was born in California in 1979 and moved to Michigan at four, where piano lessons began at the University of Michigan School of Music. The mid-nineties were Detroit punk and metal bands, drums in a grindcore outfit, a noise project called AAB. New York in 1998, the Girls Own Juice EP in 2000, then I Get Wet in 2001 and fame built on volume. The Wolf followed in 2003, Close Calls With Brick Walls in 2006, and legal trouble kept his records out of US shops for years after that. His answer was 55 Cadillac in 2009, solo improvisational piano and the last time jazz appeared on his paperwork. Rock returned with You're Not Alone in 2018 and God Is Partying in 2021. Then five years of quiet.

Temptation to Exist ends that silence sideways. It surfaced on the Thursday night before its August 28 release on AWKSHARE, a fan-run platform, plays in full on YouTube Music, and has not reached most other streaming services. The announcement came from an Instagram account that appears fan-run, and Kat Dennings shared it to her stories. The label is the Louise Harland Corporation, and the style it is filed under is dark jazz.

For a man whose best-known work is a shout, the thing missing here is the shout. Ten originals, instrumental throughout, every chair in the band filled by the same player. Where 55 Cadillac was one piano and one pair of hands, this is a full-band record assembled by the same pair of hands. The arrangements carry what a voice usually carries, and the record asks you to hear a group where the paperwork lists one man.

Without a voice, the titles do the narrating, and they alternate. Michael's Theme opens on a dedication and For Steven closes the run of originals the same way, the longest piece here at just over five minutes. Between those two names sit the abstract ones, Edge of Interior, Between Veils and No Clue, and then the geography: Manhattan Beach, North Hollywood, Double Boulevard. That back and forth is the closest thing to a lyric sheet on the record. Nightmares sits second, Insomnia sits last, the same state entered twice with most of the album in between. No Clue lands at the middle, like a shrug from a man who is otherwise never ironic in public.

What the record argues against is his own catalog. He built a career on choruses you could yell from a parking lot. There are no choruses here, and no singer to get there. The nearest reference point is 55 Cadillac, seventeen years back, same instrument family, more of the band actually present. That record could be bare and still finished. This one has to convince you a group exists, and the speakers do all the convincing.

This one is for anyone who stayed through 55 Cadillac and the five-year gaps, and anyone who would rather an instrumental record explain itself. It sits nearer the noir end of jazz than anything else with his name on it. Those who came for the rock get nothing to shout.

The failure is availability. A Thursday night on a fan-run platform, a full stream on YouTube Music, and an announcement from a fan account leave the record harder to reach than it should be, and cost it a fair first listen. The smaller complaint is the back half's run of place names, Manhattan Beach, North Hollywood, Double Boulevard, three titles that go literal where the rest of the album stays abstract.

Still, this is the most interesting turn of his career since 55 Cadillac, and the least concerned with being liked. Seventeen years after his first jazz record, he has made a second one, put it out through a fan page, and left it there. A 3.5.

The tracklist

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