SKIN AT 15 DEGREES
released MARCH 15, 2019
ALBUM 27, RELEASE 61
The first HW album of 2019, and a major shift in the way I approached making music. After putting out 15 albums in 2018, I knew the only way forward was to slow down and think a little harder about the material that made it onto the albums. This album, for instance, had about an hour of material to choose from (maybe more) but I stuck to my guns and picked my 14 favorites. I was listening to a lot of Cleaners From Venus, Lives of Angels, Solid Space, etc around this time, so DI guitars and drum machines seemed like a good idea. Those are always a good idea. "I'm Sure It's Nothing" was an attempt to write a Husker Du kind of song in Magna tuning. "Resident Daisy Cutter" is inexplicably super poppy. I actually ended up not really liking that one for a while because of it. Now I think it's fine. "Needle Stars" had 4 distinct versions recorded. This is the 3rd version. "Contact Dream" is one of my favorite HW songs ever. It's always been a big hit for me. The guitars sound like they could stab you. "Skin At 15 Degrees" is definitely another winner for me. The guitar tones on these songs come largely courtesy of the TC Electronic Rusty Fuzz, a pedal that is great when you're recording DI guitar and you don't touch the pedal after you hit record. It's a bad pedal for anything else. "Today's Angels" sticks out on here for being acoustic on an otherwise very electric album. I wish it flowed a little better but the drum machine fills get in the way. It still works for me though. Really the whole album does. A few people really liked "Pooch Punt" when I put that one out. I grew embarrassed by that one for a while. It's a good song, just a little corny with all the gridiron football references. The sample is from a movie I had to watch for a class about Black film. "Walking On The Broadcast" is the first of quite a few Cleaners From Venus imitations in my discography. That band dominated my listening habits around this time. Coincidentally, it's doing the same thing right this second. I'm on a big Martin Newell kick in a way I haven't been in a long time. This song was originally 6 or 7 minutes long, but I thought "hey this song has no reason to be this long" so I made a lot of brutal edits until it was of a better length. I'm sure I could think of insightful things to say about the last 2 songs, like how "Nursing More Than Justice" was written on keyboards and the end section lead guitars were fully written out, but I have a job to attend to.