YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO TRENDS
released AUGUST 11, 2019
ALBUM 29, RELEASE 71
These days, I remember this as me trying too hard to make a more serious and presentable album. The phrase "trying too hard" doesn't really belong in any discussion about HW, especially from me (the person who is HW), so that's not totally accurate, but it does have a bit of a joyless air to it. "Jump", for instance, took a few tries to get it to work for me, and even then I feel like I could do this sort of song way better now. It also reminds me of a woeful through-line across the whole album: my Randall RG80 was really acting up around this time, so I recorded a lot of the guitars with my Rumble 25. I thought it worked. Hindsight shows it really, really didn't. "Arrows of Color" is punchy, snappy, and overall pretty good. I actually remember not loving this one for a while after the album came out, but I've come back around on it. "Zero Heart Return" was a pre-HW song that never made it onto anything. I don't totally remember what inspired me to give it another go 4 years later. It's fine. "Je L'ai" does a lot more for me. The tremolo holds a lot of weight in this mix. It makes the guitars sound haunted, not unlike "Trem Two" by Mission of Burma. I don't use a lot of tremolo in my work these days. Any tremolo pedal I've had, I've given away (even the Boss Slicer but there's a reason for that). It's a good effect, but for whatever reason I just never think to use it. It's hitting me now that I made this album super political, but not in a way that I feel comfortable with now. It sounds like a lot of vague calls to action to my ears now, even though I know exactly what I believed then and largely still believe. "Always Be" is an exception to all of this. This came out of me and my twin (hi Dan) challenging each other to write a song with specific guidelines. They told me I couldn't use any guitar effects, and I had to use percussion rather than drums. There might have been more. The percussion is me smacking a stuffed bear against my bass amp. It's a pleasant song. For what it's worth, the only thing I remember making Dan do was mix the song in dual mono. They half-assed their song and never released it. "Indifference" should have closed the album, or maybe something else (more on that later). The intro maybe should have been shorter. This is the last HW album to use the dynamic L condenser R setup, for a variety of reasons, and this song perfectly illustrates one of those reasons: the snare's on the left, and everything else is on the right. Sometimes I was able to get the drums to behave better in the stereo field. This was not one of those times. It's a shame because the song, at its core, is great. The solo at the end kills me. At the time, I thought "You Are Not Immune To Trends" was such a hit that I changed the name of the album to this (it was previously titled Put The Torch To Grace). This album must have had 3 or 4 rejected covers before landing on this one. I've ended up writing a lot of songs that start with that E minor chord at around that tempo, and ultimately I think the best one is "Draining The Lakes". This is fine but it's not remarkable. Here's a weird story: the day I released this album was also my last day working at Staples. I spent the entire shift wondering if I'd made the right call cutting "Remember the Imperfections". It resurfaced on Quartered, so I guess it worked out okay, but I also remember having a hard time cutting "Having A Time". In hindsight, I should have kept that song and axed something else. I also remade that one, this year in fact, so who knows. It's whatever. A song I didn't cut was "Blanket Alienation", which was my favorite song on here for a while. It also reminds me of a song I finished but didn't mix down of the same title, which sounded more like "Trends". I forget why I decided to just kill it, but I got 2 different songs from doing it so that's cool. Sometimes I think I wasted a killer riff on "Emma Goldman In The 21st Century". I'm not sure if I like this song or not. The lyrics are a bit too on-the-nose for me, and I think it takes a bit away from the music. I think I lean on the "it's good" side. "Put The Torch To Grace" is similar in that way, although I definitely still like it a lot. I can't say the same for "Lovers In A Dangerous Timeclock". This song shouldn't be here. It should be on the Currents EP, and "Having A Time" and "Remember The Imperfections" should be here. I was worried about this album being too long, but wasn't willing to cut this 7-minute 4-part epic. The basic guitar for each of the 4 parts was recorded separately, which the low E string detuned a half-step for each part (D, C#, C, B). I'm sure if I cut this down, there'd be something better here, because it's not a terrible song or anything, it's just wasteful.