TENDER HAND CRUSHES THE BIRD
released FEBRUARY 3, 2026
RELEASE 122
I waited so long for Hoping For A Little More...Pizzazz to come out that I had several albums of songs just sitting around for a while. As I talked about last month, 3 albums emerged from that, as well as another album's worth of outtakes that ended up on several EPs in 2022 and 2023. This was the last batch of them. "Tension Pause" probably would have landed on one of the albums if the vocals were better. "Face It, I'm Fucked" would have needed more work, but I remember having the very original idea, thinking it was genius, and then struggling to make it work on record. It's a fairly simple song, so I don't know what got stuck in translation. "Rising" was probably a serious song at one point, but once I added the vocaloid (a HW rarity) it became a joke song destined for an EP. "My Great Idea Is Ruined" was actually 3 minutes long or so. The song fades out before the truly awful stuff can be heard. I remade this into "Great Ideas" in an attempt to salvage what I knew what was a great riff. I lost the exact form of the riff in exchange for an actual good song, so that's fine with me. "The Way Home" is similarly under-developed, but it never got another shot. This song could work someday. Same with "Prayers Went Unanswered". I like the instrumental chorus (or whatever you want to call it) but the song around it doesn't ever really climax. It just sorta walks along.