OPEN CASKET BEACH
released JULY 15, 2018
ALBUM 19, RELEASE 47
My first double album! Well, double album in the sense that it would need 2 slabs on vinyl for a record release. It's a little over an hour long. Most of the songs are not in standard (EADGBE) tuning because I was listening to a lot of Stephen Malkmus and was inspired to use other tunings. It started as a split with someone online before I decided to keep the songs for myself and take it from there.
"Salem View" is okay as an opener. I'd probably like it more if the lyrics weren't pure nonsense. "Dead Be The Crown" is the first song on here I REALLY like. I compressed everything to death when I was recording so I could record my vocals far away and it would still sound decent. Well, maybe not "so", but you get what I mean. Room tone on everything. "Drained" is the first of 4 remakes of older HW songs from various EPs. Since I knew this was going to be an hour-long album fairly early in the process, I decided I wanted 4 remakes as well as 4 songs featuring other musicians, with no overlap between the 2 groups. I'm proud of this one. "White Metal Clad" features Stefan from The World of Dust, a band I like now but who I wasn't super familiar with at the time. When I asked on Facebook if anyone would want to be on my next album, he responded, so I thought I should write a song tailored to his interests. I sent him my acoustic thing, and he sent back multiple electric guitars AND backing vocals, which astonished me because I hadn't sent him the lyrics. Him doing it made me add bass and drums to the song. The tuning of the song is C# standard with the A-string tuned to G# instead of F#. Fans of the band mICROgOBLET may recognize that as one half-step down from their usual tuning. I don't remember where the noise at the end came from. As with all of my older albums, there are songs on here that I don't think should have been. Usually I remember "The Prettiest Wall" as the song that gets slower as it goes, by accident. It still is that, but I forgot that the song's main riff is pretty neat. You could do worse, like "Goat Hill Overlook", the first song on here (and the only one in the first half) that I truly dislike. It doesn't do anything. There's no reason for it to be here. I wrote "Sky Puppy" with my friend Mads in mind, who I was very close to dating at the time. Their ukulele plucking and especially their singing really bring out something beautifully melancholy in this. After we broke up, I had a really hard time listening to this. In fact, this might be the first time I've listened to it since then. It's really great. Ironically, the song after it, "Speak First", was about how I wasn't always sure if I knew how to talk to them. There's primarily just one guitar on the song, recorded in stereo with a dynamic mic in one ear and my Tascam's built-in mic in the other. The tuning is F#AEG#BE if you want to play it at home. I don't know if the song is amazing the whole way through, but I love the way the chorus goes back into the intro. My singing actually sounds pained on here. "Ace of Eyes" is a remake I thought was extremely necessary, since the song had headlined its own EP but hadn't gotten to shine on an album proper. I feel bad that this remake isn't better. It's good, sure, but in a personal rarity, I prefer the EP version. It was in contention to be on GUAPTH but I was waiting on a friend of mine to record the basic tracks and I got antsy. It's still good. I mean, it's "Ace of Eyes". How can it be bad? I would not hear the similarly-titled "Queen of Eyes" by the Soft Boys until earlier this year. Do I have to write "King of Eyes" to bridge the playing card gap? I hope not.
And now we enter the album's second half. "I Sing For The Clouds" is one of my favorites on here. It's about Snail Mail getting signed to Matador and immediately gaining traction with Lush, an album I really liked at the time. I added the drone in the background because the song didn't feel as alive without it. "Daymare" seemed like the hit at the time. "424 Shape" is named after the shape of the chords in whatever weird tuning I wrote this in (I wanna say BF#BF#Bx). The keyboards and various synth noises come courtesy of someone I barely knew then, and definitely don't know now, named Dominic Linde. I'm pretty sure working on this song was the only time we ever talked. However, he's the one who played the electric piano at the end of verse 1 back into the intro, which is a part so incredible that, just now, I rewound (rewinded?) the song several times just to hear it start again. It's also the song that gives the album its title. "Royal Church on High" was the remake that made me want to revisit older songs on this album. I think I remade it because the original was in C, and I thought the chorus would hit harder in A. I was right. "A Living Room In My Head" has a perfect harmony in the pre-chorus where I sing "one day I’ll find my truest potential" and that alone makes this song worth it. "Updated Devil" and "Puzzle Piece" are probably my 2 favorite songs here. The first, "Updated Devil", was written after I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston for the first time. The second, "Puzzle Piece", was written in response to Autism Speaks, an organization that claimed to help autistic people but whose actions largely hurt them. Both songs landed in the setlist for the 1 show I played in the second half of 2018, and I know "Puzzle Piece" got a few more performances over the years, as well as a spot on GUAPTH. I think I respect "Updated Devil" too much to touch it again. This version sticks the landing. I rarely say that about my older songs but this one just kills. "Lavender Moon" is fun enough for a song about a retired serial killer, or outlaw, or whatever. I wrote it in the same tuning as "Another Lonely Villager", which was BAC#GBE. This song would probably work just as well in standard or drop D or whatever. "(Onto A) New Home" was a standout on the EP it was first released on, so I thought I'd make it rock a little harder on here. I REALLY like it as the penultimate song. "The Black River" gave me some trouble at the time. I wrote it on bass, and thought it sounded really good on bass, but I couldn't think of a guitar part at all. Thinking back to a time when I wrote a great guitar part but couldn't come up with a bass part, I hit up my friend Jared from Sun Tunnel, who had played bass at a recent HW show. He played some lovely guitars on this. I hear he's married now. Anyway, I always sorta neglected this song after the album came out. I don't remember the last time I listened to this, but I'm shocked by how good of a job I did writing a sort of ballad thing. I don't write songs like this a lot anymore. Maybe I should.