Gay Meat : Blue Water
Karl Kuehn’s debut album as Gay Meat is more tenderhearted than his alias lets on. Once the humor sinks in—“With queer musicians and queer art, there’s so much camp built into it,” as he told Rolling Stone—Kuehn seems to present something entirely unexpected: An earnest, loving farewell letter to his mom, Karen, who sadly passed away in 2021. Once permanent fixtures in each other’s lives, that dynamic changed after Karen suffered several seizures in a row in 2018. Kuehn put everything else in his life on hold to care for her in her final years.
Kuehn’s kindheartedness shows through his perseverance to look within and heal from the trauma and turmoil. The North Carolinian musician, the former frontman of Museum Mouth and a brief addition to Say Anything, channels his confidently courageous and vulnerable power-pop emo prowess into Blue Water, a remarkable first mission statement for his solo material, and one that sees him taking stock of grief and loss.
While the songs were initially written alone, the additional hands of contemporaries such as Jeff Rosenstock, illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, RNIE’s Lamont Brown and many more all come together as a real support system, reducing Kuehn’s burden to process his devastating loss in solitude. Kuehn overcomes the grief in the best way he knows how—singing through it over anthemic melodies—memories and experiences from that heavy period contemplatively picked apart throughout.
A voice memo of Kuehn and Karen expressing words of affection to one another opens Blue Water with the bare, acoustic “Born Cursed,” Kuehn reckoning with “the hand [Karen was] dealt.” The glistening “My Mother’s Son” is deceivingly uplifting, its catchy woos and oohs distracting from Kuehn’s existential examination of his unshakable inherited coping patterns coming from his mother, thus making him realize “it’s true [that he’s his] mother’s son.” “More Good Angels” is urgent with its insistent chords, the song written right after Karen’s admission to the hospital, but its brightness is no deceit—Karen having made some recovery with her movement makes Kuehn’s words, “more good comes to those who wait,” a true relief.
In a sharp mood shift, the brief “Hymn 1 (Severance Pay)” follows a funereal synth pulse, Kuehn asking, “How did you figure this all out? / Or did you just start running?” to potentially anyone, a plea for figuring out how to keep it together. The bursting, despondent riffage in “Vodka Sprite” contains lines alluding to coping—“This life’s a bad trip / This life’s just one bad trip”—but “Cheat Death” shows some respite, Kuehn regaining much hope and grit when discovering Karen “still recognize[s] [him]” despite her condition: “In spite the state of your left brain / It’s clear you’ve still got so much fight.”
The closing title track is another voice snippet, a sentimental singalong from Karen after she learned to use her voice again—an incredibly affectionate immortalization of their mother-son bond. Blue Water’s immediate grief may be insular, yet Kuehn’s resilience is extraordinary in creating a vital reminder to continually cherish those who are dearest to you.
Label: Skeletal Lightning
Year: 2026
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