WRECKAGE
released APRIL 29, 2017
ALBUM 5, RELEASE 14
In the days before I consistently made good albums, this was one of my favorites. I think this took 9 days to make. On Bandcamp, it says this is sort of a concept album about attraction. I certainly didn't make it with that in mind. "Big Damn Heroes" is about soldiers realizing they probably shouldn't have joined the military. "Church of Julia" is about someone who's haunted by the memory of their dead lover. Putting a ballad at track 2 is certainly a choice, but I think it works okay enough. I don't like how buried the vocals are, but it still sort of works. I say the word "wreckage" in the song, but I know for a fact that the album title came before the lyric. This wasn't the first cover I made for the album. "Directions to the New Appliance" is a title I stole from an unreleased GBV song. I don't know what it is about "Weekend Numbers" that draws me to it 9 years later. I've always really liked this one. I guess it's because it's fairly moody and gothy, which I don't normally do. I don't know. I don't listen to a lot of goth. "Oceanic Love Note" teases a great big solo at the end, but actually it's just more rhythm guitars. Nowadays I wouldn't even consider releasing this without bass and drums. It's still good, but it could have been even better. "The Bright One", on the other hand, was great from the get-go. I wrote the bass line at a Guitar Center in Miami. That same visit also birthed the chords to "Beads", but one thing at a time. I'm pretty sure I wrote "Beauty Through the Centuries", words and chords and all that, before I even attempted to play it, so I assumed it would be much longer than it actually was. It's nonetheless one of my favorite early HW songs. "The Dividing Line" is a little tricky to look back at. I was pretty sure I was asexual by this point, but I definitely had not considered that I was also aromantic, so a few of the lyrics don't totally hit right. Musically though, it's still really strong. I remember looking out my bedroom window and watching my new neighbors throw a pool party while I worked on the piano solo. It's a little wild that this isn't the end of the album. "Array" was a last-minute addition, because everything else was done but the total runtime wasn't at half an hour yet. In the old days of HW, a bunch of albums had songs written at the last second to satisfy my runtime requirement. I know Sex With God had one too ("A Man For Every Mountain") but it's generally not an issue anymore. I first wrote "Left Side Up" in 2016, but it didn't seem like much at the time. A year later, I gave it a second thought and tried it again. This version is way better.