NO VICTORIES
released MAY 14, 2021
ALBUM 36, RELEASE 100
This album marked two milestones: the 100th HW release, and my college senior thesis. It wasn't what I started the year working on as my final, but that project collapsed and I needed something so I decided to just make another album, but with some caveats. For one, the project was developed as 8 EPs first. I picked the strongest tracks from each to work on further for the album. Each EP had a guiding concept, such as "start with bass" or "start with lyrics". For brevity's sake, I won't go into which EP each of these songs came from, but if I think a song had an interesting enough compositional method, I will bring it up. For another, as a result of wanting the songs to be a little tighter, I worked harder on the vocals for this than I ever have on anything else I've done, before or since. If you consider it a third milestone, I also recorded some of this at Gradwell House, a recording studio in South Jersey that I interned at during my last semester of college. Shout-out to Amy Tighe, another intern I sometimes worked with, without whom some of these songs would not sound the way that they do.
"No Victories" started with the arpeggio loop. I wanted to write a song about Christ's second coming from the perspective of hypocritical Christians who don't realize just how awful they are, and that Christ is going to send all of them to hell. I don't foresee this ever actually happening, but it made for a good opener. I have a vivid memory of recording the vocals for this at GH, and wrapping up just in time to help set up the single worst band I helped record during my entire internship. They were HORRIBLE in EVERY way. They weren't prepared to play the songs, they weren't tremendously kind to each other (but they didn't give us any shit), and one of them made multiple racist jokes over the course of the session. I stayed late that day, just to watch it all unfold. It was hilarious. Oddly enough, track 2 is also about religion. It presented an alternate history where I lost my mind and became super religious a la Daniel Johnston. I wrote the lyrics to "I'll Hold The Mirror" while walking around my neighborhood (see also: "Mrs. Matter") and commenting on the things I saw. I liked it a lot at the time but quickly I thought the lyrics were too silly. In hindsight, the words are fine. Someone once told me this was his favorite song of mine. "Lay To Rest" was largely recorded at GH with Matt Weber's Omnichord. I had never seen one in the flesh before, and I was able to sneak away to the other control room and record this little thing. The noise in the intro is the only sound I could get of a chord organ I'd just purchased, which otherwise just didn't really work. I think the lyrics were supposed to be about an old couple accepting their final days together. I wrote "The Way It Is" in a funky tuning: EGDGBE capo 6 with a broken string. I forget if it was the D or G...actually it might have been the B. I could never remember how to play it after writing it, so it hasn't returned to the setlist. It's a bummer because it's always been one of my favorites on the album. The chords in the outro are completely unrelated to the rest of the song. "It's Just You" might be one of the most important HW songs. For one, it uses the Delay Lama plugin for the bass. For another, by attempting to draw a line between me as Hello Whirled and me as Fern (or, at the time, Ben), I realized that actually, the two are inseparable. It's a nice little bop that I felt good making the first single. "New Crown" is the first of three songs on here to feature a guest musician. I recorded a lot of acoustic guitars and vocal tracks, then set it off to my friend Todd Jordan (Motocrossed, Fixations, Kevin and the Bikes, etc) who did a LOT more than I expected. It's a good song for it. "Imitation" was me grumbling and moaning about what I felt was the stale state of modern indie rock. Honestly? I kind of still stand by it, although I definitely like the song less than I used to. It didn't need to be so blunt. "Easily Entertained" features the delicious lead guitar talents of Ethan Oliva (Ex Pilots, Gaadge, Bushworms, Barlow, Sober Clones, etc). I can't believe this album not only has two songs where I complain about local bands being boring, but they're next to each other. I still really like this one but it feels tasteless to perform it.
On the other hand, "Please Stop Dancing" was a song I loved but grew out of it because of how it felt to perform it. I remember playing this one at a show later in 2021 and the crowd got really into it. It felt like my signature song for a little. I mostly just got tired of doing the whole intro unaccompanied. It's a good song about a sentiment I still agree with, but I don't cherish it like I used to. I don't actually have much interesting to say about "Under Her Brilliant Rays". The production is a bit lightweight. "Chariot" features the third and final guest of the album, that being Danny Loos, who played on Hole Of Infinity before this and would go on to play in the Hello Whirled live band for a year and a half down the road. This was his favorite of the tracks I wrote for this album, but I initially wasn't going to include it. I re-recorded it and sent what I had to him to do whatever with. Both of us recorded so much for this set that the only thing I know for certain Danny contributed was the little guitar leads that pop up now and again. "Mrs. Matter" is a tight little rocker that seems to be my go-to for live performance from this album. I just like its structure. When I was making this, I thought it might be funny to have a song that wasn't really music, something to terrify people and make them uncomfortable. To my surprise, "Heroes Are The Best Villains", a piece about a cop slaughtering a family, was one of the best-received songs on the whole album, at least amongst my peers. If memory serves, "Money Is The Death of Art" was the only song recorded entirely at GH. The drums were mic'd up with 5 dynamic mics all lined up in a row in front of the kit. It's effectively a sequel to the original version of the song, which is on Suitcase 5. "Savannah" is my favorite song on the album. It's crushing to me. I don't have much more to say than that. "At The Bottom" seems to carry on an unintentional running theme through the album: art vs commerce. I'm firmly on the side of art and against commerce. Maybe you are too.