Welp. This is the second time publishing Duck House Season 6. A second round of white-screen-of-death befell sgp.com a month or two ago. I think we only lost a few posts, but the energy level and enthusiasm to rewrite this one is low!
Here’s the album!
Check the discography page, find it on Bandcamp, or go right to the Google Drive!
And here’s the teaser that originally went up in October 2024.
Now that Blonski’s excised the demons from our wordpress account, we can post things again! I’ll let him explain why there’s been no small glowing pig for a year, but, for once, it’s not because we haven’t been doing anything!
First up is the release of the second Muffin album, Life Up Here. I put this one together over the course of a couple of months last winter and spring. Each song was written and mostly recorded in one night with drums or overdubs or other stuff being added in later. I had fun trying to keep some of the sound of the first album while also evolving it a bit. It’s still a Presidents / Queens of the Stone Age fusion, but I think I’ve made it a little more my own on this one.
Check it out on Bandcamp or hit up the discography page.
We’re currently wrapping up mixing on Season 6 of Duck House, and it should be good to go soon.
Since publishing Doozywop’s Wilford Brimley tribute EP in early 2022, Small Glowing Pig has been busy learning new jobs and raising babies. We’ve also moved equipment around, bought new stuff, and gotten ourselves back in the saddle.
On my end, we had our spare room in the basement redone and it’s been coming together over the past few months as a music room. Got a sweet ultrawide monitor, a TV to throw lyrics onto, some sound dampening foam (thanks, Blonski!), and a new Focusrite Scarlet 18i8. Also picked up an Ibanez hollow-body and inherited a banjolin, which I didn’t know was a thing.
Blonski and I are cooking up another album that will possibly be Season 6 of Duck House. As that was coming together, I worked on an EP of high energy rock songs.
Rather than starting with fooling around on guitar or programming synths, I wrote each song by coming up with a melody and lyric idea and then built chord progressions around them. I tried to keep each song short and avoided bridges or solo sections. I also kept the sound consistent between songs, making use of the same instruments, amps, plugins, etc. in each track. Check out the new tunes on Bandcamp or on the discography page!
The band Doozywop got their start in the mid 70s. After working the doo wop circuit and finally getting signed, they set out to record their first album. Disaster struck only a few tracks into the process when their sound engineer moved. Unable to recover, the band lost focus and ultimately parted ways.
The former members of Doozywop spread across the United States, settling in DC, Chicago, Philly, New Orleans, and Dayton, Ohio. They took up new hobbies like yoga, rock climbing, and gourd collecting. It seemed as if the Doozywop story would end there, but the tragedy of 2020 brought them back together.
After getting word of Wilford Brimley’s passing, the band reunited with the goal of honoring Wilford at his funeral. At the service, all hopes of celebrating the great Quaker Oatmeal spokesman’s life were quickly dashed as the crowd was unappreciative of the band’s music. It would have been easy for Doozywop to pack it in and return to their lives. They would not choose the easy road.
Fueled by the sting of the funeral show, the band wrote a double album that would honor their late friend. Eschewing the the doo wop revivalist scene from their past, the resulting compositions reflected the changes within each member’s lives and the music that influenced them since their fateful recording session so many years ago.
The title of the album was to be From Wilford to Brimley, A Collection. Unfortunately, after recording three songs, the sound engineer moved to Australia. The recording studio lay dormant, and any chance of completing their homage to the silver screen legend was lost.
What is left is the energetic yet soulful EP that smallglowingpig is able to present to you today: Doozywop’s Remembering Wilford. Check it out on Bandcamp here or on the discography page.
According to Southernliving.com, the foremost authority on philosophy and chronology, Marty Rubin once said, “Time does not pass, it continues.” If you don’t know Marty Rubin, he is, of course, the Canadian author of The Boiled Frog Syndrome. This is a book I must admit I’ve never heard of. It is also a fascinating title.
Anyway, time is crazy, because as I post Duck House‘s Season 5, it has now been four years since the last release. I’m not sure, but it might be even worse that we began what became the Duck House project nearly 10 years ago – in 2012. This means we’ve been making Duck House albums nearly half as long as Small Glowing Pig has existed. What.
And with that, we present to you Season 5. This project began when Steve and I listened to Season 2 and thought to ourselves, “This is weird. We should do something weird again.” Also it started by wanting to make a dance song (it would become “The Butcher Shop”).
Enjoy the muzak over on the Bandcamp page or check it out on the discography.
-Mike
Soon…
Admittedly, it has been 2021 for almost a month. Is it everything we thought it would be? Probably!
Kate shares her voice and lyrics with the SGP family on her very own debut EP, “The 2021 EP”. This was a project that started back in late November, when Kate came up to Vienna House 2b and was inspired to throw down some melody on a guitar progression I (Steve) was messing with. From there we found ourselves writing about 2.5 songs in basically one session; the two complete tunes ended up on this EP.
For these first two, Mike was kind enough to take some rough mixes and record understated drum parts, which really fill out and liven up the tracks. I had initially tried some programmed and live-recorded drums myself, but my rhythm wasn’t jiving with, er, the other instruments I recorded? Well, I was glad to play more of a producer role and get to hear and choose some tasty fills for the songs!
The third track was actually written and recorded right around (and after) New Years. I think we came up with the chorus during another Kate visit to the Viennas, and kind of sang it to each other for a week or so. I finished up most of the instrument recordings by mid-Jan, and recently Kate laid down her vocals.
Look for more projects with Kate in the future!
-Blonski
At the risk of making it seem like Music Club is back, I’ve decided to finally post the last music discussion-by-email that Steve, Jefim, and I had. This one starts in 2017 and then is resurrected by me in February of this year. Jefim still hasn’t weighed in, but I can update this post if he does…
Anyway, this time we went with one of my suggestions. We focused on the band Crumb, who at the time only had two EPs. I innocently hoped that by sharing an EP, we’d get through it quickly and have the opportunity to jump into a second album in short order. Well, here we are in 2020 publishing our thoughts about Crumb’s Locket.
Enjoy!
-Mike
Blonski
I let this one get away from me during the Holiday times, but I’ve been listening to Crumb’s Locket for the past several days. Deciding to go a different route than the track-by-track and address it (mostly) as a whole. So here’s my take:
This EP was enjoyable overall. Not knowing any of Crumb’s other music, it’s hard to know from these 4 songs how versatile the band really is. My impression of the band, but more specifically the singer, is that there’s a conscious decision to leave her vocals flat in the mix, almost buried at times. The energy and melodies are subdued, and coupled with the effects on guitars and synths gives the impression of a psychedelic/atmospheric vibe they are going for. Somewhere between Tame Impala and TOPS. But the melodies don’t have the catch or variety of either band, so ultimately its a “nice to listen to” but not enjoyable enough to get that much more out of with each listen. Lyrical content as well; Most lines are forgettable as they fade into the mix. More on the memorable side was the title track, which seems to have more passion and vocal dynamic to it in general. I’m all about comparing the sounds to other bands I’ve heard, as you both well know; “Locket” had a Cardigans vibe to the vocals, dismissively playful in tone.
Where I appreciate the band’s performance most on this EP is in the soundscapes they attempt (and sometimes succeed) to develop. More specifically the choice of synth patches and effects that give each track a cohesive quality, while being varied enough to not get stale from song to song. Instrumental breaks in each song help bring the soundscape to life and make me think of bands like Gentle Giant and Pink Floyd in their psychedelia, and hints of Minus The Bear with possible loop/delay elements. Some songs like “Locket” benefit from a push and pull feeling created by the dynamics of each section, where others like “Plants” keep things pretty flat, almost soundtrack-like. The synth-work seems to be the most unique and identifying part of the band, and will get me to come back and listen to their next release to see how that will develop over time.
Production wise, I wan’t crazy about the mixing. The drums were muddy at times, and very flat sonically, lacking energy as well (except last track). Solid playing, but just not that interesting to listen to. The instruments often got in the way of each other. I did like some of the bass sounds they got, from muted Motown strings to jazzy plucking, and honorable mention of the fact that he was definitely rocking a fretless! Sounded refreshing in the context of the style.
To use an overall rating for the EP, I’d give it a 3 out of 5. When it comes to the general style that Crumb seems to have (which I enjoy), I tend to gravitate to more experimental and challenging compositions and performances. E.g. where a band like Hiatus Kaiyote solidly lives, borrowing from jazz and R&B freely and pushing the boundaries as they go (sometimes too far, admittedly). That was probably not a fair comparison, but this EP really just made me want to listen to another thing that sounds like it, only better.
Mike
I feel a little like a grave robber exhuming a corpse, but I’m going to attempt to bring this album discussion back to life by listening to Locket by Crumb and distracting myself as I do some “real work”.
The shifting effects work on the keyboard part contrasts with the consistency of the guitar, drum, and bass sounds. The bass work is nimble in spots but doesn’t get in the way. This song also introduces a theme of the EP (band?): changing tempo or time signature from one section to the next. I suppose here it’s for dramatic effect, building in the last third of the song – complete with a soaring, effect-laden lead.
The intro to the second track, “Recently Played,” has a Karate vibe thanks to the whammy bar – until the keys (electric piano?) come in and then the flangy chorus. It somewhat clumsily shifts time between 3 and 4 and the chorus drags to me a bit because of it. They pull a similar trick with a tempo change on the title track, though it’s a little more successful there.
“Thirty-Nine” introduces and layers a few sounds that I would have thought incompatible, and the results to my ears are mixed. I dig the organ and the sweeping synth, but the fizzy drive and chip-tune synth arpeggio don’t do it for me. Lots of tom work in this one, but it all feels a little deep in the mix – like they either couldn’t get rid of the room sound on them or they added some reverb that makes them seem separate from the rest of the band. When the song eventually breaks into a sort-of-solo section, it gets a little sloppy. Parts like this one make me wonder how “live” this recording was. I suspect their live show sounds pretty faithful to this album.
The vocal production and the drum sound in the intro to the last track reminds me of something we would have done in the 3 Strip Meal days… turn up the lofi knob to create contrast with the rest of the song. The melody on this one is a little too question-answer for my liking. Each first phrase has a response phrase that turns the melody around a bit. I think because the entire song does it, I end up fatigued by it. The last third of the song turns into a slow-tempo jam where the band is seemingly abducted by aliens if the sound effects are anything to go by. Not sure how deep the lore is for Crumb.
I’ll second Blonski’s final analysis: pleasant to listen to but there’s not really any single thing here that will keep me coming back.
An indeterminate amount of time ago (a year… two years?) I enlisted the help of couple buddies to haul a Wurlitzer organ from across town (in the rain) and into my basement. Not being an organ player (or piano or keyboard player of any kind), it has mostly enjoyed a quiet existence observing family members passing on their way to retrieve clean laundry. This fall seemed like the right time to put it to work.
Each of the three songs on what would become Information Speaker‘s Go Ahead and Look Foolish started differently. I began writing “Frank Starts Out as a Truck Driver” with electric guitar, “Egypt Has Pyramids” with organ, and “Fiasco” with acoustic chords. While I tried to keep some consistency in tone for each instrument, the way each song was written led to somewhat different feels.
The lyrics were all taken directly from Amazon reviews. Read about the products that inspired the songs below!
The Irishman (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Le Creuset Stoneware Mini Round Cocotte, 8 oz., Marseille
Thanks to Jim Hernovich for the awesome guitar work on “Egypt Has Pyramids”. I was struggling to record a solo when he came over and laid one down in all of about 15 minutes, never having heard the song before.
Check out the muzak over on Bandcamp or in the discography.
-Mike
Cleaning out old external hard drives is much more interesting when there are gigabytes worth of lost music on them. Just a quick update today to share some NotGrllBrush practice recordings from July 2014.
Catch a Star by Men at Work
Home at Last by Steely Dan
Too High by Stevie Wonder (into Home at Last)
You Part the Waters by Cake
