The songs

Finished mixing the record. I have four songs up now.

1. Sermonize
2. Summon the Witches
3. On the Way Back Home
4. Soft Ender (My Love)

i haven't heard it yet, but do you happen to have lyrics?

i'll listen to it tonight, or tomorrow.

Like most (all?) of this record, the song centers around my attempts, failures, and reattempts to stop drinking. This particular song I wrote one night when my wife was out of town visiting relatives and I spent the evening getting utterly trashed and listening to music, by myself.

The lyrics, which might not translate well onto paper:

The physical world fights to reunite.
Every heartbeat tastes like wine.
You can imagine,
or maybe you can't,
the total loss of moving time.

I'm living it up on the floorboards, now,
and I find...
it's a bengal light.
I'm falling apart in the bottle, now,
and it feels...
just like suicide.

Summon the witches, the liquid love.
A five dollar cry.
The king is laughing,
the jester dies.
Lick the cut, the blood's alright.

If you can find me, and take me home,
then I know...
I can still make things right.
Are those echoes really whispers, dear?
Are they yours?
Are they mine?

alright....

this sounds better than i have ever recorded and ever will record probably, but I'm going to criticize anyway...

i really like the lyrics a lot, with the exception of

and it feels...
just like suicide.

so cliche

and i've never understood writers talking about suicide as something they have experienced/committed.

Music is good, but that riff started to drive me insane half way through, very repetitive and it started to take over the lyrics, which you really don't want to happen with this song. I like the second guitar parts coming through though in the latter part of the song.

So overall its a very decent piece, but not something i'd put in a non stop rotation, i like the lyrics though, with the exception of the one mentioned above.

Lastly, please take my "review" with a giant grain of salt, since you are a much more talented artist than i am, i'm not even sure i should have commented at all.

Tell me about it. But the whole album was about me trying to get out of this thing before it kills me, and that song (as I said) I wrote while horrendously drunk, so I promised myself I wouldn't tinker with the lyrics. I think it's a great little portrait of how I viewed this problem when I was right in the middle of it.



I had just discovered Spoon, and I'm pretty sure I nicked the strum pattern from I Summon You. Or at least approximated it.



That's cool. I would, but I take a different approach to amateur stuff than most people. Sometimes I think it's better, flaws and all, than the pro stuff. For example, I absolutely love tree's new song. It's real, and it doesn't feel like a week in a studio.

that's pretty cool actually, good point.

No i wasn't saying that i didn't think it was pro enough. Personally i prefer rough demos or live recordings of any artist over polished studio work. The only reason i wouldn't put yours in heavy rotation is because the of repetitive riff. I'd play it now and then though

The guitars are really cool and I love the recording quality. It kinda feels like walking along somewhere empty and trying to get somewhere nice but dramatic like you might die soon. Not entirely my kind of song, the way it's sung, but cool and nicely done.

I added another song from the album. This one's a bit more abstract, and you wouldn't figure to listen at it that it was aimed at myself. It's been a tough record, gang.

Essentially I was thinking of the differences between the me that exists on a day-to-day, vs the me that exists when I'm drunk. The preachy, wordy, obnoxious bastard, who seems to want the same things I do. So it's a song from one me to the other.


Sermonize
--

There are patterns here to guide us,
lifted up by the motion of the land.
We both scatter with the notion
that we both do the best we can.

And when the lights go up and the curtain is down...
we can insist it was all metaphor.

So sermonize.
Sermonize.
Come on!!
Sermonize.

And when your congregation abandons you here,
you can accuse me of whatever you want.

But the heat from the fire burned out the margins.
Vision and perception are not the same.
And if there's one thing we've forgotten,
it's that the muscles in the eye
are guided by the brain.

So now the lights go up.
The curtain is down.
Are you ready to throw it all away?

Sermonize

Sounds really cool. The recording quality is so nice; sounds so clean. Your vocals kind of surprised me with the 'come on!' and it's good; nice intensity. It has a nice experimental feel that I like alot. Really good guitar work throughout but especially the soloing toward the end. I'd add this song to my iTunes.

wow i really like sermonize a lot, great lyrics as well.

question; how do i download songs from myspaces? do i need a myspace account myself to do so?

I dunno. I've always just clicked download and that was that.

Glad you like the song. I'm aiming to have a few more songs up on there pretty soon. I just can't decide which two.

I love the Nick Drake-esque delivery in parts of the second song.

Bump for two new songs, both available on the MySpace page.

On the Way Back Home is kind of an interesting song for me. I woke up humming the tune, sat down, hit record, and there it was. I didn't write or map anything out before hand. Ended up being one of my favorite songs on here.

Soft Ender (My Love) is, in fact, the end of the album. In spite of what might be a few hokey lines it hit me pretty hard, writing it.

My memories of Ender were much harder.

That's filthy.

Anybody else have any thoughts on the songs?

i'll listen to them tonight. looking forward to it.

dude if you ever come play a show in the Miami area i'd be front row.

i absolutely love love love On The Way Back Home. And the fact that it was all from scratch just makes it even better. amazing.

Soft Ender didn't do much for me, the guitar tone sounded a bit off against your voice (did you use a capo?). But still a good performance though.



edit: i just heard Soft Ender again, and those lyrics are actually very good. guitar still sounds to high though. but still. wow.

Con, you're awefully nice to me.

I'm glad you like (love) On the Way Back Home. I'm not using a capo on Soft Ender, but it's a bit of an odd set of chords. I had a different take that was better on a technical level, but I wanted the weariness (and the occasional break in the voice) that this version had. It felt better.

Anyways, with Sermonize this puts me at 2 for 4 with you on this batch, which is better than I thought I'd bat. I am eternally grateful for your input on any and all things.

So what's the deal with this album? is it going to be released in any form? non-digital i mean.

Actually, I had sent some demos out when I first started working on the songs, and got a call and offer from a little label called Shrimper. They seemed like a good group of people, and I like a few of the bands that have released music with them. But at the end of the day I had two problems with the idea:

1. I've got a family and a career, and other than a short period in the summer I would have no time to promote a record. This is a fairly lightweight label, and I'd definately feel like I was burning up their money for no return.

2. I'm a thief. I like to steal, what can I say? So if I figure I should get other peoples' music for free, I should probably return the favor by making MY music free for other people.

It does suck, because I can't afford studio time on my own, and it's not really out there for anybody to notice. So the sound quality drops a bit, and maybe 1/50th the number of people hear it anyway. Plus, how much fun would it have been to be able to do the wandering musician schtick for a while? I feel like I'm too young to have that many options sealed up already.

But it doesn't really change the feeling I get from the creation, and I still am able to share it with people, so whatever. I can still do a month of playing gigs wherever I feel like in the summer.

So the short answer to the question woulda been: no.