The Free States approaches “Most of All” from a songwriting practice built around patience and construction rather than performance. The project belongs to American songwriter Shaun Lyons, who developed an early fascination with recording and became more interested in building songs piece by piece than in playing live—recalling the foundational discovery of an instrument that anchors Stephen Day: Mama, I Found Your Guitar. That method remains central to his work, where an album can take the place of a setlist and each record gets its own space to develop—prioritizing quiet, deliberate creation over the frantic chase for public recognition explored by princefarming: You Win The Trophy.
Lyons’ path toward that process has included long stretches away from the stage, including time in Ukraine with the Peace Corps and a later return to performing. He has since released three albums in three years, keeping each one around thirty to forty minutes and treating the album much like a book. Echoing the intimate relationship themes explored in Romattic: Candy Smoking, “Most of All” sits inside that approach, where the individual song belongs to a larger body of work rather than standing apart from it.
The Free States keeps that work largely independent, with Lyons making much of the music on a MacBook and bringing in collaborators where needed. The project has grown through accumulation, one song and one record at a time, with the next piece already waiting beyond the page—a tactile, experimental commitment to sonic collage echoing how Extended Blundering constructs rhythmic narratives from raw environmental sounds.
