dressing to undress

technically this should come after THE CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN WITH A TRIANGLE in the discography, but i think it looks better before, and you know what they say…if you’re going to break from the tradition of keeping things in chronological order, do it for aesthetic reasons.

there’s no way this was ever going to work as a proper album, given how much material there is and the fact that it covers a period of eight years (with many changes in equipment, sound quality and skill level in that time), and i doubt it’s the sort of thing many people will find very interesting. i mean, there’s more than three hours of music here! who wants to listen to that much of me in one sitting, or ever? but i think it was worth putting together anyway, if only for myself. i’ve certainly been stewing on the idea long enough, and this is really just the tip of the ice berg; it was seriously whittled down from the gargantuan thing it started out as, and then whittled down again after that…and it’s still relatively gargantuan. slapping things together in chronological order would have been the easiest thing to do, but then the thing would have no real flow. it was a bit of a sequencing headache, especially after i realized that a two-disc sequence i was fond of wouldn’t work because there was far too much music to squeeze onto just two cds. in the end i decided to treat it more as a marathon mix-tape, even if there’s only one artist and no rap to be found throughout (although comb-over outro comes close). i could have thrown in some things recorded over the past year that haven’t figured out where they want to go yet and make it 1999-2008, but it was difficult enough making sense of the thing to begin with, so i’ll save those more recent songs for either a future misfits compilation or whatever proper albums they ultimately decide they’d like to end up on.

strangely enough, this mess of music would probably work fairly well as an introduction to whatever it is that i do, or at least offer a pretty well-rounded idea of some of the places i’ve been over the last little while; there’s synth-based non-pop from the time of GROWING SIDEWAYS and WHO YOU ARE NOW…, several BRAND NEW SHINY LIE out-takes that are about as close as i get to “alternative rock”, improvised dementia from the time when my songwriting process mainly consisted of hitting the record button and seeing what toppled out, instrumental pieces of all shapes and sizes, experiments (some successful, some not so much), song sketches, ten-minute tracks and thirty-second fragments, spoken word pieces, parodies, an epic piano ballad, and several tracks that aren’t like anything that’s ever come out on an “official” album of mine. you don’t get much of a taste of the visceral, screaming, psycho-johnny side of things, which was pretty much covered on all those papa ghostface and guys with dicks cds, and there isn’t really anything here that touches the epic insanity that can be found on some of those albums, but there is at least one song with a few of my favourite screams in it, lifted from the obscure starving artists cd.

if i got into all the details i would end up writing even more than i did on the CHICKEN ANGEL WOMAN page…the booklet that comes with the album pretty much says all i have to say about the songs, and then some. as bloated as it is, i think this sort of functions as an alternate “greatest hits” album, at least in a stylistic sense. it probably doesn’t make for a very consistent or predictable listening experience, but it’s a good one-stop place to get a bit of a feel for how musically schizophrenic things have been for me over the past several years. with some tracks it’s pretty clear why they never got to hang out with the songs that showed up on proper albums, but there are also some things here that i think are among my best work. a few worth mentioning: promises, the infamous epic piano ballad, which is somehow one of my favourite things i’ve ever done even though it should make me shudder with its rhyming lyrics of love and i’ll never write anything like it again; khaki lamb, which is a pretty simple acoustic thing that goes from a fairly monochromatic existence to being hammered with sudden bursts of colour during the coda; trouble, which is not necessarily one of my most interesting spoken word pieces, but has a certain atmosphere to it that sets it apart from the others; unfold a tail gorgeous with painted plumage, which has to be one of the best song titles i’ve ever been provided with via a spam email (turns out they lifted it from aesop’s fables); it’s not easy to say, which says it all in barely a minute without a single word being spoken or sung; bloody chicago (morning), which is one of the best blues-based things i’ve done, in 3/4 time, even though it was recorded at a time when i didn’t really know anything at all about the blues. from the sketchy to the sexy, it’s all here, and if it isn’t, well…you can find it somewhere else, i’m sure.

TRACKS:

CD 1

trading places
trouble
comb-over outro
lost riff
filler (live on CJAM)
puppet shoot puppet (remake)
recalcitrant
“my life” part one
unfold a tail gorgeous with painted plumage
bloody chicago morning
womb events
shitty guitar
piecemeal
farmer nugget
my little one
i’m not the only one who sees through you
tell me something (demo)
distorted drum riff
cultivating november spray
candy
some enchanted early evening
stop thinking about it
it’s not easy to say

CD 2

symbolism therapist (2008 remix)
promises
khaki lamb
not alright
unstable things (live on CJAM)
“my life” part two
durex sheik condom song
eggshell embryo
d.r. must die
broken strobe light dances
the debaucheress
random red guitar riff
koopala
razor blades on cotton balls
just a girl
clumsy
methamphetamine
these hills would be mountains if you were smaller
untidy
olive branch of sores
semi-climactic synth
rinse off the gun-shy finger

CD 3

husk
an uneasy alliance
someone’s gotta tell her
they removed your wings (sketch)
eight hour twitch
late night sentimental vomit
i’ll try anything twice
sale of a dead man
smoky bum
there are no violins
harmonica echoes
he was good when he was alone
all angels
easy four
mail box
some people sign their name & it looks like a broken fish hook
matriel
wurly test #2
very supersexy
synth intro/jazzy piano + brushed drums
cat piss on my bed
a home at the end of the frozen river
olive branch of sores (instrumental)

STUFF TO LISTEN TO:

Puppet Shoot Puppet (remake)

Broken Strobe Light Dances