Hits No Longer

At present I could easily play a show consisting of nothing but singles. That might excite some and disappoint others. It’s a tricky business.

That said, I don’t want my next record to be anything but a representation of where I am now, and that means an album that I am wholly behind in its artistic deliverance. While I have never sat down and purposely tried to write a hit song*, the eye of the present is infatuated with operating in a wholly artistic frame devoid of regarding commerciality.

While demoing the next album I have done it with several members of my band, mostly live off the floor at this point. I have been playing bass and a bit of acoustic guitar, as much as my neuropathy will allow. We have found a small, comfortable studio in the GTA which I’ve come to love. Its engineer is a wonderful fellow.

During the process one of the things I’ve done is gone back and listened to demoes from the past that I believe should have been recorded. The foremost amongst them being We Have Done This Before, We Will Do it Again.

Having demoed the song years ago my producer at the time was against doing it. Why, I have absolutely no idea. To me it was a fantastic song of depth, character, and lyrical content. But I was made to feel it unworthy.

Revisiting it, it’s something I truly feel I should record a final version of. It is a highly complex song and will take some time to reproduce, including writing new lyrics for a section in its middle as I would go on to use them on Parts from Moving Walls.

I understand that fans can listen to the demos online, and that they might be considered old, but to me they are moments captured in time that simply never got their due. And so I’m open to revisiting them.

The same is true of Night Orders, another song that I believe should have been recorded. The combination of its guitar parts and synth were great, as were the lyrics and vocal. I might revisit some of the lyrics, but want the chance to rediscover it if possible.

One new song that I’m excited about is actually only three minutes in length, if not a little less. It describes my time in a psyche ward over New Years between 2020 and 2021 during a highly depressive time given events. During that stay, none of the regular staff were present and I had to wait a week to see a psychiatrist that would immediately release me. In fact, given that he was English, we talked more about football in that meeting than my reason for being there.

In the late nineties I started to mess around with a guitar part that I would come back to again and again for decades. I couldn’t make it work. I’m happy to report that we’ve finally made it work and I’m extremely excited that it’s finally being used.

*The only song that I ever wrote to be a “single” was Antipop. Having delivered the Audio Of Being to the record label they believed there had to be more standout singles. So the first song I wrote to assuage them was Truffle Pigs, which given its lyrical content could never be a single. My management then wanted something more. Frustrated, I literally sat down and wrote what I believed to be an absolutely ridiculous song that they couldn’t possibly want. That song was Antipop. It’s one of the worst songs I’ve ever written. Nevertheless, it eventually became a single over the likes of Tripoli and others. Go figure.