dressing to undress

how did a quasi-stop-gap ep, with half of its tracks glorified out-takes and the rest cast-offs that didn’t fit in anywhere else, turn into one of the better things i’ve done? your guess is as good as mine. the last minute or so of judas goat and all of fidget still feel like two of my finest moments. the rest isn’t too shabby, either. i think i even prefer this treatment of skinny ditch to the original found on WHO YOU ARE NOW, though my singing was probably better in the original version. viverrine and have you were both written during the period when i was keeping my mandolin in my bedroom and playing in bed a lot. it seemed to get the juices flowing in odd ways. but i’m getting ahead of myself here.

this wasn’t a cd i intended to make at all. i wasn’t planning on putting another ep out so soon, but there were a few songs i’d recorded that i knew weren’t going to fit on any of the full-length albums i was marinating in my brain. i didn’t want to throw the songs away, so i thought i’d try throwing them together with a few other things i wanted to get out of my system, and somehow they made sense that way. i thought this might serve as sort of a lead-in to the serious change of direction i felt coming, and i was saving myself for some new equipment, which was the main thing that held me back from extending things into full album territory. the “loop” on judas goat was actually played manually in real time; i had recorded the synth bit to a click track on the mixer, only to discover after the fact that when i made a loop on the synth it didn’t sync up with the mixer’s idea of the same tempo. so i had no choice but to play it all the way through the song, without the convenience of playing it once and looping it like i normally would. i guess it’s a good thing my rhythmic sensibilities are fairly solid, otherwise i would have been in an unpleasant situation.

i’m not normally one to rework my own songs (or ever play them again for any reason after they’ve been recorded to my satisfaction), but in january of 2005 i was putting together a set list for a solo gig at phog (the only place in windsor that bucked the trend and allowed me to book a gig during the time of JGBAG—johnny’s great battle against indifference), and i thought it would be interesting to give the synth-based skinny ditch a different arrangement for electric guitar. it also gave me an opportunity to finally put to use a guitar riff i had been sitting on for about five years at that point. i originally intended it for a song called “the story”, written circa CHILDREN HAVE NO EYES, but i never got around to finishing it. i worked up some new songs for the show as well, one of which was an instrumental guitar piece improvised around a few melodic ideas (ambient guitar, since i couldn’t think of anything good to replace the working title). i didn’t plan on recording either of these songs, but the more i thought about just what the hell i was going to do with songs like viverrine that didn’t have anywhere to go, the more i realized they might fit in well with the other homeless tracks. of the two, ambient guitar is closest to its live incarnation, though the last section isn’t played as smoothly as i intended it. i think my nails were a little too long for their own good. i decided to leave the harmonics that didn’t quite come off as they were, to remind myself that i was playing a guitar in case i ever forgot. and i really just didn’t feel like taking another pass at it when all the other bits were fine. skinny ditch redux is the only place real drums show up on the cd, and they sound about a hundred times better than they ever did before because tyson helped me put new heads on the toms and kick drum. it’s amazing what a difference something as simple as new heads can make…i had left the factory heads on since i got the drums in the summer of 2000, oblivious to the fact that the kit had more potential than those shitty tama heads allowed it to realize. with evans heads, suddenly the toms had body, sustain, and they sounded like drums instead of cardboard boxes. the kick took on a whole new life as well.

fidget was one song that surprised me. i threw it together in a few minutes after sitting on a few bits of it for a while without developing them into a full song. i didn’t think of it as much more than filler to pad out the ep, but by the time i had finished triple-tracking most of my vocals it was starting to sound like one of the best things i’d ever done. i never saw it coming. it just kind of took on a life of its own…as if the song said, “you think you can just spit me out and forget about me? we’ll see about that.” that song changed my whole view of the ep, and all at once it didn’t feel like just a collection of misfit songs anymore…it felt like an organic whole that was just what it needed to be. the songs knew where they were supposed to end up even when i didn’t.

TRACKS:

viverrine
judas goat
zucchini chokes
have you
ambient guitar
skinny ditch redux
fidget

STUFF TO LISTEN TO:

Skinny Ditch Redux

Fidget

LYRICS:

VIVERRINE

you are the most beautiful one
with your bony hips & your airborne kiss
i’m gonna pull over the car
every time you try to turn the radio on
those songs are for mannequins
with shitty hair & synthetic clothes
hold onto your fairytale life
’cause when the story ends, the book gets burned

carnivores
we’re the kind of people who fall in love with ideas
we got nothing new to say

holy hell, please come back
all you sentimental men, please unpack

JUDAS GOAT

kisses on the lips of your lip-less brother
hold onto his shoulders & let your hips jut out
some kind of pudding oozed from our pores
we were separating the good from the tacky
what a waste of contempt

break me into five jagged pieces
where each one falls, it will leave a wound in the ground

this rock has a name that you need to sing
it’s a melismatic exercise in undeveloped breath control

love turns us all into idiots
the rabid, scowling, clawing kind
we cling to the scentless artifice
like disembodied soldier-fish

ZUCCHINI CHOKES

the streets are filled with the smell of urine
i want you when i’m drunk like this
if you ever tell me you love me
i’ll slit my throat with my fingernails

a murder of lightbulbs circle around you like a halo
the closer i get, the more you try to push me away
whoever taught you how to lie, they did an uneven job
’cause you’re kind of hit & miss
but i’m onto you
& the way you change the rules like you’re so sure
no one’s gonna notice

mispronounce your name
kill it while it’s sleeping
circle your prey
it’s all in the jaw

HAVE YOU

you’ve got a million ways to sidestep everything

you say he reminds you of me
that’s like being kicked in the testicles

where have you gone?

SKINNY DITCH REDUX

laugh your fucking head off
this dream belongs to you
it’s cheaper when it’s out of season
show me when you are what you want to be
show me a lifeless smile
clench the throat like a fist
it’s a taut remembering-things-you-wanted-to-say…
but the throat kept them there

you are an exit wound on fluorescent display
you’re learning how to manipulate time to suit your needs
we drive around the block twenty five times
you say it’s just a part of getting older

will you ever do anything worth my time?
will i ever say anything worth your fickle ears?
pay attention
pay attention!
you might miss something
your life could run away without you
& you wouldn’t even notice

it’s a deflection game—
the words are different, but the sentiment’s the same

FIDGET

when are you coming home?
you know there ain’t no food at all
i have licked the cupboards clean
& there’s nothing there at all
the dust is very easy
on a stomach that is queasy

your baby is a monster
he grew up to be an ogre
he’s got teeth the size of buildings
& you are part of the sky’s ample bosom

when are you coming home?