HOPING FOR A LITTLE MORE...PIZZAZZ
released JULY 22, 2022
ALBUM 40, RELEASE 113
Listening to this immediately after Questions For Concerned Citizens was not a great idea. This is the only HW album specifically recorded for a label. Repeating Cloud reached out to me and asked if I'd put out an album with them, and I was just happy that anyone wanted to put out something of mine. It's not a bad album, but when I think about this one I mostly get hung up on how much better it could have been, and how little attention it got after sitting on it for quite a while waiting for release. Most of the album was finished in winter 2022 but it came out in the summer. There's a reason why RC didn't get the album until the spring, but we're not there yet. The album title came to me in a dream. The album cover is a project from my freshman year art class (high school, not college) that I found in a drawer one day.
I regret putting "When Can I Admit I Miss You" first. It's very earnest, in that I am singing about things from my life, but it was also sort of a joke poking fun at itself and I don't think anyone got that. It's also really long. A lot of that has to do with the ambient outro that I gave this song. Why? No idea. I don't remember making it. It sounds like a synthesizer taking a shit. "Holding Back The Water" is my favorite song on here these days. I loved it then too, but not as much as another song we'll get to in a minute. I tried really hard to teach this to my live band, but the time signature changes threw everyone off and we cut it from the set last minute. I wrote the chords for "Work Before Opening" at, you guess it, my job before we opened. It doesn't leave much of an impression now. I was listening to a lot of Fugazi in late 2021 and early 2022, so I wrote "It's Noise" in an attempt to write a song like that. It might have also been an attempt to write a Polvo song. All I know is I wanted a dissonant riff, and I think I got that part right. "Shaking, Crying, and Holding On" is mainly a reminder of how long this album ended up being. I don't like putting out albums longer than 45 minutes but shorter than 60. Not sure why, it just makes me feel funny. This album clocked in at around 47 minutes, and in hindsight I should have cut some of these for a leaner experience. "Ruins" would have survived regardless, because it's the reason this album took so long from "mostly completed" to "released and in the world". I had recorded drums for a lot of unfinished songs one day, after which I picked my favorites to finish for the album. The only song in the "favorites" pile without a new recording of live drums was this one, and given its idiosyncratic nature, I thought to ask an idiosyncratic drummer to play on it. Yes, that's Greg Saunier on drums, and yes, per my request, he recorded his part in Photo Booth like he did the drums on Future Teenage Cave Artists. It's crazy to me that he did it at all. "Cheerleader" was the nearly unanimous big hit from the album. I thought it was the hit. When I sent my bandmates the album and asked them to pick the ones they wanted to play live, "Cheerleader" was the only one on all the lists. I still think it's a hit, but I also remember burning out on playing this live after a while because it has just so many words. Those words were inspired by a side quest in Dragon Quest XI S. The droning throughout the song comes courtesy of the Sound Stone, which is like an e-bow but cheaper and more restrictive. I don't even know where mine is right now. I paid a friend $200 to make a video for this one. I don't regret it. "Red Channels" bugs me nowadays. I always feel like I phoned this one in. The guitars get wildly out-of-tune during the bridge, and I don't remember exactly why. My best guess is that I had run a zip tie through my guitar strings to make it sound like a capo was on the 1st fret. "20 Minute Saxophone Solo" was an attempt to write a song that was basically entirely syncopated. My bandmates didn't like playing this one, but unlike "Holding" I think we did actually play it once. "Nothing Changes" was one of my favorites at the end. There's a lot of assorted noisy bits in this one that keep it engaging. It's sort of a cross between Pere Ubu and Swell Maps. "There Remains Still A Groove" sounds weird and murky because I slowed it down and messed with effects to make it sound like less "Work Before Opening". I think the bizarre sounds elevate this over "Work" for me. "Ascend To Paradise" is why I regret putting "Shaking" on here. This is a fever dream. The guitar sounds messed up because I ran a zip tie through the strings. This should have been track 1. "Dance Across The Lights" has an intro that has nothing to do with the rest of the song. The vocals sound really cool sometimes ("wonderful table" in the first verse) and they really save the song. "A Cathedral Repeatedly Falling Apart" is a bit of a wild ride. The intro is from an instrumental demo I recorded on a 4-track I no longer own, which later became "Holding Back The Water". The song itself was pieced together from a 20-minute improv recording. All of the strings were tuned to B. My parents both complained about the feedback. I think the only guitars I overdubbed were the ripping solos at the end, which I had totally forgotten I'd done before this listen. Did I really put all the worst songs in the first half? I might have. No wonder Small Albums didn't review it. Oh well.