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A State of Wonder 22-year-old indie songwriter Gavin Preller releases his debut album on a legendary label. by Kirsten Ferguson A gnarled tree trunk pocked with woodpecker holes. A cast-off dirty flip-flop. A mossy log with a nub shaped like a manatee’s snout. Those are all images that float through the gauzy video for “Wonder,” the first single from indie songwriter Gavin Preller’s debut album, “There Is Wonder,” released in May on Shimmy-Disc, an influential New York City-based record label founded by musician and producer Kramer.
horrible thing, but it was also this beautiful gift for me because It gave me the freedom to come home and record everything I’d written during my time spent in different places,” he says. “When I was traveling, I didn’t have my instruments on me. It was less of a time of creation and more of a time of inspiration. When I got home from Portland and I was living
The 22-year-old songwriter and his sister Maggie shot the homemade video with a camcorder at an Albany-area nature preserve, one of their favorite places to take the family dog, an excessively energetic Border Collie named Echo. The video and song’s vibe embodies the definition of “wonder” in the words of Merriam-Webster: “rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience.” “The first single I wrote in such a carefree way,” Preller says. “I didn’t write any of the lyrics or chords down. I think I woke up one morning and the chords and melody came, and I just went down to the basement and recorded it and started singing over it. And then I looked up and was like, ‘Oh, it’s a song.’ I didn’t really find meaning in it until it was finished.” In positive psychology, the concept of “flow” suggests that true happiness comes from being so immersed in an experience that you forget yourself. It’s an interesting concept to apply to the single—a lo-fi tune with hazy, layered vocals and subtle melody—and to Preller’s path in life, which seems imbued with a go-with-the-flow Zen. The classically trained pianist dropped out of Berklee College of Music at the age of 20 and worked on an organic farm in France. Then after returning to the U.S., he took a train to Portland, Oregon, in a youthful bid to experience adventure on the road. Preller was living in a van in Portland when COVID-19 hit. “Obviously the pandemic was a
in the basement of my parents’ house, I started to record that stuff for the first time.” Preller searched online for a budget microphone and audio interface and ordered the first equipment that popped up as recommended in his browser. “I set up a microphone and started recording things. And that's the same equipment that I ended up using for the stuff that got me signed,” he says. Kramer, a legend of underground music known for playing in the bands Bongwater and Shockability and for producing many esteemed indie rock artists (including Galaxie 500, Low, Half Japanese, Daniel Johnston and Will
Oldham) “discovered” Preller after the young songwriter sent him a batch of six unvarnished songs for mastering. Mastering is the final stage in audio production when a mix is balanced and optimized for playback. “I recorded the six songs all in a matter of a few days,” Preller says. “I guess there was some part of me that believed they were worthy of professional mastering. I don't even really know why, but I thought that it would be worth giving it a shot. So, I sent the six songs to Kramer through an online service where you pay for mastering. I was a fan of his work with Daniel Johnston and Will Oldham. And he responded saying, ‘Let’s make a full album, and then you can release it on the label.’ It was very surprising, but it also made perfect sense when it happened, and it definitely felt right.” The six songs that Preller sent to Kramer ended up as the first half of “There Is Wonder,” and the producer largely left the songwriter alone to write and record the second half. “He said take as much time as you need to finish the album, which put me in an interesting position because it took me like three days to record the first six songs and now I had all this time to finish the rest,” Preller says. “So that was a challenge, because you don't want to overthink things or do things differently than you were before.” The result is an introspective, thoughtful album that captures the fortuitous nature of the moment—one that, as the single suggests, has the potential for awesome mystery and joyful astonishment. “For me, the song ‘Wonder ’ encapsulates the whole experience of the album in some ways, in terms of just being alone, making music and then randomly being connected with a guy and being signed to a label,” Preller says. “It all was wonderful, and I didn't do that intentionally, but it kind of makes sense in some strange way.”
