“Being an artist, being someone who spends time alone, it is hard not to have feelings of paranoia. You need a delusion of grandeur to make anything in the first place, and that feeds into it…Letting go is a strong aspect of this album. I was doing failed perfectionism before trying to sound chaotic while actually being very controlled. This time I was in the studio playing not trying to make things perfect. That’s not what I’m meant for.” So begins the story of Ethan P. Flynn’s debut album Abandon All Hope, which pours twenty-four years’ worth of experience into songs that recall 70s greats like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson while dealing with coming of age, friendship, falling in and out of love, navigating the age of anxiety and aspects of young life in the 21st century. All delivered with an emotional intensity that’s rare in an age when the feeling that all has been said and done draws us toward postmodern, ironic detachment.