The title of Charlie Kaplan’s latest album stems from an episode involving his father, who was being visited in the hospital by a longtime friend. When his friend laid his baseball cap on Charlie‘s father’s bed, the usually polite–but–superstitious elder Kaplan was abruptly shocked. “In old cowboy movies,” he said, in a story recounted by Charlie himself in the press notes, “a hat on the bed is an omen, a premonition that someone will die”.
Indeed, A Hat Upon the Bed is a tribute to Kaplan’s father, who passed away in 2013, as well as to his son, born in 2025. This “fatherless decade” between those two events was a source of love and pain, which Kaplan has used as inspiration for this, perhaps his most personal and brutally honest work. The record’s core band consists of Winston Cook-Wilson (Kaplan’s bandmate in Office Culture) on keyboards, Andrew Daly Frank on lead guitar, Julian Cubillos on bass, and Jason Burger on drums. These are longtime friends and collaborators of Kaplan’s and can navigate his eclectic songs with ease.
A Hat Upon the Bed is, according to Kaplan, about “the line between the knowable and unknowable; truth and superstition; science and magic; natural and supernatural; life and death”. Kaplan may not have the answers, but he enjoys pondering them, and the unknowingness of death and the unshakable bonds of love result in some beautiful, open-ended music. The record begins and ends with brief instrumental tracks: “Seaside” on acoustic guitar and “Sandy” on piano. These songs are small sonic morsels that beautifully bookend the LP.
The title track begins the album proper as an airy, ethereal folk piece on love and loss, supported by Zosha Warpeha on five-string viola and Kristen Drymala on cello, players who appear on several songs and are arranged sublimely by Cook-Wilson. “Begging forgiveness from no one,” Kaplan sings. “And slipping away / Down leafy street corners / There’s always more we can say.” One of Kaplan’s many strengths as a songwriter and arranger is his innate ability to seamlessly transition between different subgenres, making it seem effortless.
“Halley”, inspired by Kaplan’s father’s habit of gazing at the stars on their front stoop, is a gauzy slab of melodic shoegaze, while “Fear of Choking” is a low-key baroque pop gem that brings to mind the sophisticated songcraft of Paul McCartney. The piano-driven “Leading Man” sounds like an earworm straight out of a 1970s AM radio. “Transmission,” meanwhile, amps up the surrealism, with an open-ended, rudderless feel that you want to get lost in long past its five-and-a-half-minute run time.
Kaplan makes numerous excellent choices, often venturing into unique territory. Much like “Mescarole”, on his 2024 album Eternal Repeater, the straightforward “I’m In Love with You” is based around a very brief lyric couplet (“It’s true, I’m in love with you / What am I gonna do?”) as the band swirls around him in an intoxicating Wall of Sound production style. Kaplan is obviously a fan of rock and roll in its purest form. You can almost hear Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers loping their way through the easy groove of “No More Mistakes”, which features more of those irresistible strings.
Elsewhere, Kaplan seems to broach the subject of the climate crisis with the loping, tuneful “Is It Gonna Be Alright”, acknowledging specific fears in the verses, and expressing a quizzical tone in the chorus: “All of this is going away / But it’s alright now / Living for another day / But it’s alright now.” The directness of the hypnotic “No Way Am I” sparks an occasionally angry tone, as he sings “I know you go so far up your own ass / You didn’t know how I grew up so fast.”
One of the record’s emotional high points, however, is probably the sweet, heartfelt “Heaven”, performed by Kaplan on vocals on acoustic guitar. It’s a simple arrangement, but Kaplan’s emotions are elegant and heartfelt in the lyrics, where he acknowledges his deep love for his son, or perhaps his father, or both? “I could never tell you how much I loved you,” Kaplan sings. “Even if I had a million years / So it was just a matter of time before I lost you / If it was a needle in a haystack I’d die trying to find it / Give away all may days in pursuit / I won’t mind it.”
It’s no surprise that A Hat Upon the Bed is a double album. Charlie Kaplan has so much to unload that chronicles that “fatherless decade”. He’s always been a master of creating the perfect arrangement around his engaging, deeply felt compositions, but this time around, he’s at his absolute peak. A Hat Upon the Bed is a towering, emotionally honest work of art.
