How tight can we wrap our hands around the neck of the song?

good morning ~

changing it up slightly today - still giving you something to listen to, but this time it’s other people’s music. finally updated my long dormant “vibes of late” playlist - - I also updated the now 6+ hour “shaking air” playlist - - check ‘em out below

“vibes of late” is a collection of music i’ve been digging lately & bands I’m rooting for - - lots of people I’ve seen play lately, no genre turned away

“shaking air” started as a companion playlist for Cicada Waves and as such has a lot of bugs and pianos but is now my go-to zone for when I need something serene

enjoy!

also - - wanted to share the flyers for a couple of record store appearances I’m gonna be doing the weekend after the album comes out - i’ll be singing songs and slinging discs at everything nice in Ellenville and at the Fire Talk Shop in greenpoint, check the images below - - -

ALLORA is out in eight days - - not sure when you’ll see me in this format in the next couple of weeks but gosh I hope you enjoy the record when it drops.

Five years is a long time. Count the number that have passed since we recorded this album - one, two, three, four, five. And these past five years were particularly stacked! Ruptures both personal and global, changes of address, waves caught and waves that crushed. Revisiting these songs with the people that were there in Montebelluna to capture them in 2019 was a vividly mortal experience.

Learning the shape and coordinated maneuvers of the record proved easier than I anticipated - something in our brains or bodies recalled the hits, more or less knew the steps of the choreography. Even if we flubbed the chords or came in too early, we still retained the spirit of the thing, we could intuit where each piece was supposed to go. But remembering how to do something is quite different than still being able to do it. I felt out of shape, both more generally in my body but also in the quickness of my fingers, in the bounce back of my voice. My throat was raw after a couple run-throughs, my joints ached, my clothes were soaked with sweat. The album is a series of kick ass backflips and not a one of us had gotten all the way upside-down in quite some time - here we were trying to hit it without properly stretching first.

I was probably fifty pounds lighter when we made this record and had reached a manic peak with my dedication to cardio. In response to my friend dying I ran even further, partied even harder - the endorphins were the only thing that felt good. Dan and I were going for runs every day we were abroad - down the boardwalk in Lugano, along the Po River in Torino, through the dusty foothills of Veneto. In Milan we even had what felt like an anti-semitic run-in with a couple of Italian cops - why are you running, they asked us, as if at that time I could ever explain to them why I was running.

Yearning for some kind of collapse or transformation or transit to another world in which my heart hurt less I panted in the beautiful vistas, slammed the free, foamy beer offered by the festival, told Nico and Dan to play it louder, faster, louder, faster, longer. Nearing ecstatic catharsis at the end of the set I threw my guitar in the dirt, only to pick it up to play a love song without a mic. These were the poles, a whisper and a roar, apparently kinda concerning to be around.

By the time we reached the studio we were hungry for it, feeding off the dare of it all - what could we really do in two, maybe three days? How loud would the amps go? How tight can we wrap our hands around the neck of the song? We burned through the tracks, a serene ache in a beautiful place.

In no way do I wish to ever replicate the circumstances that led to the creation of this album - though I am fond of remembering these times, I recognize how much of a knife's edge we were line dancing on. I was unwell, driven, out of my mind, ripping it all down, lighting the pyre, laughing too loud, punching the car apart with a pair of bloody fists. We could not have kept going at that speed if we tried, an all out sprint.

Later, when everything shut down, I felt many things. But part of me felt some relief - surrender, a way off of the treadmill.

So much has shifted and settled in the intervening time since we roared in the old stone farmhouse. Many people died, I moved out of the city, I twisted my ankle and had to stop running for a long time, through a confluence of kindness and providence I received a baby grand piano into my home. I have not even begun to touch the hem of the garment of mania that was the vibe of our time in the studio.

So last weekend when we saddled up for what will be our power trio's one opportunity to play our one planned show all together, I did feel the creakiness, the rust, the weariness. I felt, too, how remarkably not all-in-it-all-together my bandmates and I had been in the intervening time - social distancing and their own lives full of shifting circumstances, it has also been five years since we three all shared one hotel room in Torino. My hair is thinner than it used to be, my lungs less quick on the draw, and pretty much every song we played was a good five to ten BPM slower than they are on record. We're just doing the Crazy Horse version of these songs, I said, feeling like we sounded perfectly sloppy and as obstinate as a mule. I felt a big swell of triumph just getting all the way through the songs, I felt proud of the racket we were stirring up.

Ever since I first booked the release show, I've wondered whether or not it will be interesting to fail at accurately recreating these recordings. Will it feel embarrassing to be too old to rock the way we once did? There's proof right there, you can hear the younger version of us ripping shit, scratched into the plastic of the LP. But now having played with the lads I understand that our failure to reach the "skirling peaks" described by the New York Times in a live setting will simply serve to underline the fact that these songs were captured at a truly insane time in our lives. I do not wish to be insane again. I heard this old story once that when Hüsker Dü were recording Zen Arcade they would dump speed directly into the studio's coffee maker, drink it down black. Always thought that was cool but I recognize that if I tried something like that now it would probably kill me. This is not the Insane Italian Album. No, this is just a tribute.

But what about you? What has happened to you in the last five years? Are you sometimes kinda scary to be around? Are you hitting your skirling peaks?