I believe in albums, not singles. My life can be drawn as a series of milestones, and an album stands at every high point, low point, turning point, ugly time, sweet time, lost time, and everything in between. They are the tentpoles that hold up the circus tent. In these sandcastles of song I may be an elephant or a clown, sometimes the human cannonball, and I may just be deeply in love with the girl on the flying trapeze (she bears a remarkable resemblance to my wife by the way).
An album can be a novel, an opera, a tightly-knit short story collection, a wild ride, a lost weekend, and it has a magnificent beginning middle and end. Of course many albums cannot be described this way. They are just a collection of songs written and recorded in a certain place and time. They can be fantastic, and lovely but the quiet voice on my shoulder would point out that they rarely rise to being more than the sum of their parts. My gut tells me that if I am going to go through the messy, brutal work it might as well be for the loftiest destination, not the middle one. Of course, the higher you climb the longer the fall down. There is no built-in reward for high-minded pursuits, just added risk.
New songs present themselves to me in strange moments and I do my best to witness them, to listen and get them down, however broken and rambling, however ridiculously long. These cryptic demos sit in folders that bear the wishful names of a new album, like Bone Music, or Return to Tipasa, Mom & Pop’s General Store. It is more fun than saying “album 3” this way. I do not listen to the demos for months, sometimes even years until I think there is a central one, a cornerstone song that opens onto a hallway of doors - or not. It’s a great big maybe, at best.
Then I take the demos and create a crude playlist of them, put on some headphones and take a long walk through the city, letting the music be heard for the first time, not recognizing myself in them, just asking if I am satisfied, or entertained, if they make absolutely no sense, or are hammering away at something that should be a thousand times more subtle. The playlists are edited, songs left off, new ones dropped in. The sequencing is always a revelation. Sometimes a song that I am on the fence about can punch above its weight, if it is sandwiched between two that give it some heft. I can never predict where or how this leg up will happen, just that it is possible.
One theme threaded though the new one is beginning to reveal itself. Do we all have that wish to go back to a more innocent time in our lives, or to a place that held the salad days in its grasp, when life was less of a mess? I think some of that is at the heart of it. But there is more to this grand scheme than the loss of innocence or the wish for it, it is about how innocence is a bit of an illusion, that we always knew and just didn’t want to admit some things to ourselves. There is one moment in a song called Blue Dress, when I am about ten and am in a crappy little elevator with a prostitute and her John. I am sneaking into this place to use the bathroom and they are on their way to some room. I stare at her shoes, a pair of Candies. He wears cracked loafers. I am in black Converse high-tops with broken and retied laces. I fixate on our shoes, not them as the elevator wobbles up on that odd afternoon. It seems impossible, but there it all was, as simple as that. In another moment, a father wrestles with the early signs of divorce, and separation from his young daughter. He promises they will listen to all of her records on a Sunday, but not this Sunday. Her mother is sucking down G&Ts in the next room. There is one about how car lights at night cast shadows on the ceiling and look like monsters if you want to see them that way. We all know that feeling, the rumble of an engine, the light swishing around, it is as common as a G to E minor song. I’m just trying to nail it all down, and turn those demos into full fledged recordings in a long room that echoes, with mountains in the distance outside the windows, pulling this guitar out, then another, then a harmonica, whatever is needed but nothing extra, singing a bit softer than I used to, and maybe leaning into a falsetto that is not trying so hard, imagining I am singing lullabies to grownups and wishing them sweet dreams.
I would write something eloquent and throw you some worn-out bones to pick up. Then, as common with your writing, and I am sure in your music. I get the point on the first read but then a second pulls me into that elevator with you. But that was your point, right? For me to see it? I would say you are doing your job well because I could almost smell the people in there with you. Your thoughts on life - Bob Dylan said it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFj8uDubsE
The rest is just weather. (put stupid emoji here)
what a beautiful story