HALOS FOR SCARS
released OCTOBER 2, 2018
ALBUM 23, RELEASE 52
Another random album from 2018. The front cover was taken the first time I ever got stoned. "Actors" was built around some piano improv I recorded very late one night in the art building on campus. I wanted it to be in stereo, so I used my old iPhone and my older iPod Touch to record each channel. I remember it taking a while to even get both files in one place, let alone aligned. The resulting song isn't anything special but it's a fun story at least. "Happening" was an old song I rewrote for this. There's actually only one guitar on the whole song, but I threw different effects on it to make the song more dynamic. I wrote "Wire Philosophy" for a compilation of songs about (but not by) Robert Pollard (my #1 ever) but I ultimately thought the guy who put it together was maybe not in it for the right reasons or whatever (something petty) so I didn't send it to him. When the comp came out, I listened to it and identified 2 songs as being monumentally better than the rest of it. "Here And Somewhere" also only has 1 guitar on it. It's in the same tuning as "Grounded" by Pavement. This is my favorite song on here that I've never re-recorded (more on this later). "Reaching Identical Moments" was about me and a friend of mine both dealing with breakup shit around the same time. "Proudest Defeatist" is a song I sort of wrote vocals first. I had the melody and some of the words and I remember recording voice memos of myself singing what I was sure was a good melody. The final song ended up being one of the weaker songs on here. "Rainbow Swing" is built around 2 Optigan beats. "Invisible Love" was a twisted take on the breakup I was dealing with. I've always had a soft spot for it. "Camera" has always been my favorite song on here. I wrote the riff while a friend of mine was taking photos of me for an assignment, so I named it "Camera" and it stuck. I've always wanted to perform this live with a full band just to pulverize our audience. I played it solo acoustic once, but never with other people. One day it will happen.