As a way to stay in touch and stay music-talkin’, Jefim, Blonski, and I decided to start a monthly music discussion “group.” The plan is that one person will send a recommendation near the beginning of a month, and then all three of us will listen to it and send along our thoughts. We’ll see where this ends up, but it certainly was fun thinking critically about music and talking about it again!
The first album up for discussion is Painted Shut by Hop Along (listen here or purchase here). Emails are below:
In late 2012, I began recording a followup to Vacation, which I ingeniously titled ii. The resulting unfinished tracks are some of the best recorded and produced that I’ve done. Certainly some potential in a few of these. Not much cohesiveness, though.
AAA: Not sure what these lyrics are supposed to be about. That’s definitely a theme among many of these unfinished tracks. I’m messing around with mixing acoustic and electric here, trying to update the original sound of Vacation. As I continued recording, I realized I missed the raw-ness of the original album. The breakdown on this one loses focus and the drums never received the cleanup work to the MIDI that they sorely needed.
Electric: The beat for this one is a direct ripoff of a Name track. Not sure that I did it on purpose, but it happened anyway. Some of the synth and guitar interplay here is kind of fun, though.
Funk: This track fulfills my urge to play something a little groovier and funkier about once or twice a year before I realize I can’t pull it off without Blonski and Devin. I assume the whistling was a melody idea. Not sure.
Rock Dance: Rock! This definitely doesn’t fit the sound that was defined on the first Vacation release. That album’s sounds grew organically, mostly around the restriction that only one microphone be used throughout the recording. Without that restriction this time, these tracks varied wildly in style. Decent solo-y thing in the middle of this one.
Slow Rock: Looking back on this one, I really like most of the sounds I got out of the instruments. The guitars are crunchy and satisfying, the bass is defined, and the synth layers in the background. I purposely broke with expectations for structure for this track, which gives some parts of it a little bit of a Tool vibe. I think I was looking to channel Rated R era Queens with the ending section. Would’ve liked to see a good singer finish this one – which is why I didn’t bother and it remains unfinished.
Summer Vacation: No bass and some hastily thought out guitar parts make this the least finished of all of these unfinished tracks. Could have been decent, but it’s hard to tell from this early edit.
Meat Without Feet – WPOP scrapped initial sessions:
Track 01: This was the long version of what ended up being “Introduction” on the final album. The “verse” section mirrored the outro track from the original Meat Without Feet album, but it ended up getting cut from the final release.
Track 02: Kind of unremarkable in most ways. Some acceptable grooves, but obviously not much came of it.
Track 03: The first track with some vocals. As mentioned earlier, I have no idea what these are supposed to be about. Meat Without Feet has a vague focus on romantic lyrics (see “In this Town” and “I’ll be There” from the first album), but they’re neither very relate-able nor interesting. The chorus vocal performance is decent and the outro is somewhat interesting.
Track 04: This song was appended to the conclusion of the previous track. I like to think of them as a pair and this was to be a response of sorts. This might be my favorite of the unreleased WPOP tracks. Had I thought of a melody, it could’ve made it to the final release.
Track 05: The vocals on this one are somewhat unlistenable, but I’m glad I was trying to get out of my comfort zone. The lead guitar line in the chorus is pretty neat – both in tone and writing. Most of the lead makes me happy, actually. As long as I don’t think much about the words (which I assume was intended to me some kind of parody?), this track is enjoyable to listen to. The drum parts in the middle and end are fun and the half time bridge-y thing is kind of cool.
The Name remains one of my favorite projects Blonski and I have ever worked on. The combination of samples, live performance restriction, and multiple-meaning-laden lyrics make it one of the coolest concepts we’ve come up with. On the first release, an EP with only two original songs, we explored a few different sounds without knowing exactly where we were headed. This second album was even more groovy and we were pushing what we could accomplish with our live setup.
The Name 2 or The Sequel to the Band: The title of this song perfectly sums up why I love this band. They named a song as the sequel to the band itself. It hurts my brain. It’s also possibly my favorite song we wrote as The Name. Mix one part funky guitar and bass, one part pottery/sensuality, and one part breathy vocals and you get this obvious “single” from an album that was never completed. Luckily, this one was nearly finished and is totally listenable. I think it was only missing a trumpet solo? Maybe?
Blonski Says: "The Name sessions definitely stand out as the most fun collaborative recording endeavor Mike and I have done recently. This track was a strong beginning to a second offering... unfortunately the live performance aspect wasn't realized for the newer material, and we stopped short of another EP. Very fun to listen to!"
The Quench Incident or: We couldn’t even come up with a second title for this one. The rap section would have been epic if we ever did final vocal takes. This one sounds like a combination of Jamiroquai and later-era Parliament. It’s also about the Large Hadron Collider, so there’s that. Worth noting is that Blonski claims to be the “Higga Man.” Be sure to listen for my groan of disgust at the quality of our scratch vocals!
Blonski Says: "Yikes, my rap verse! I really liked our experimentation on this one, and you can hear the fun we had recording the scratch vocals. This was maybe a bit too much to pull off without a lot more polishing, especially live, but if we had it would have been great. Gotta dust off the sampler!"
Here’s the no vocal version as a bonus:
Blonski Says: "Listening to the track without the vocals makes me think the track was a little thin sounding, but we really didn't mess much with playing it live to kinda evolve and 'fill in' the canvas. It grooves though."
In December of 2014, I decided to write and record some tracks using existing poetry as lyrics. I started with “Life is Fine” by Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes – Life is Fine: The music and arrangement is too melancholy for the true tone of the poem, but it was freeing to not have to worry about writing lyrics. I like some of the harmonies as well, though some more vocal consistency was necessary for the sparse nature of the track.
Song 02: Not sure what this one was supposed to be. Wish I remembered which poem was attached to it. This marks the return of real drum recording too, I think. The guitar work in the second and third sections and the interplay between guitar and ukulele is pretty good. If you listen close in the last part, you can hear my son saying something.
After working on Crossroadsas the band Predicament, Jefim and I attempted to record a few other songs. The idea was that I would write and record most of the music (with Blonski occasionally pitching in on bass) and that Jefim would write and record lyrics, melody, and vocals. With him living in Boston, this seemed like the only way to stay productive. We had two tracks half baked before abandoning the project.
Runner: For this track, I tried to keep things very simple so that Jefim could take the spotlight with his vocal performance. The guitar/bass line changes in each verse to keep things interesting, and it was probably inspired by some Army of Anyone. I think had we polished this one with some harmonies and improved mixing, it could have been pretty decent.
The Traveler: This is me messing with some lead guitar effects. The chorus was supposed to evoke “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart,” which was a favorite of ours from the Black Velvet days.
Bonus version with no vocals, but higher quality and with Blonski pitching in an improved bassline:
