The Melancholy Kings

The Melancholy Kings are from northern New Jersey and, as transplants from NYC, they wear their love-hate relationship with the Garden State and its big city neighbor on their collective sleeve. In terms of musical style, think Paul Westerberg meets Jeff Tweedy somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.

The Melancholy Kings were born of the ossification and desolate misery that exists in its purest form at certain white-shoe NYC law firms. Singer/guitarist Mike Potenza and bassist Scott Selig suffered the ennui of law firm existence in offices two doors apart on the 47th floor of a non-descript building in Midtown Manhattan, all the while not knowing of each other’s secret parallel pasts as quasi-bohemian post-punkers from the pre-gentrified Lower East Side and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. During the indie craze of the ‘90’s and ‘00’s, they played in a number of different almost-famous bands, traveling the world and playing at some of the iconic clubs and venues of the era – as opening acts for bigger acts and legendary artists. After souring of the scene and the lifestyle, they each turned to the law as that rebound relationship that one often comes to regret, all the while doing various side projects to maintain – if barely – a baseline degree of sanity.

Brought together for a charity gig, Selig and Potenza bonded over their similar musical pasts, their shared current misery and their simpatico playing together. Having since escaped that Midtown office, they rededicated themselves to expressing the music that has been, and continues, welling up inside of them. With the recent additions of Paul Andrew on drums and Peter Horvath (Potenza’s former high school band-mate and leader of the legendary The Anderson Council) on guitar, The Melancholy Kings filled out their roster.

The Melancholy Kings unabashedly acknowledge their influences, from the Rolling Stones to Wilco and from the Replacements to the paisley underground, as demonstrated by Potenza’s and Horvath’s interweaving guitars, the subtle bass lines of Selig and Andrew’s mad-genius drumming. Selig and Potenza alternately fill in on keyboard parts sprinkled throughout their recordings.

The Melancholy Kings’ eponymous 2019 debut album showcased their diverse influences: From the scorched landscape of "Eighth Avenue", which serves as the album’s coda, to "Lovesong B", a paean to the desperation that grips divorceé bars around closing time, to the breezy, put-the-top-down melodic musings of "Memory’s Lips", the music both celebrates and cringes at the rich tapestry of life’s follies in the Land of Springsteen and Honey, and it rocks with a quiet intensity recalling the rough-hewn insouciance of 80s, pre-grunge alt-rock.

After a pandemic-driven hiatus, The Melancholy Kings are once again playing and also recording their next batch of tunes, set to come out in mid-2024.

If you miss the days of Dinosaur Jr. rocking out on 120 Minutes and the Feelies on college radio, and if you dogmatically feel that R.E.M. was at their finest when you couldn’t make out the lyrics, The Melancholy Kings are here to say, “It’s alright; help has arrived.”