After returning from Saudi Arabia and moving to Vancouver around 2012, I remember going through a bit of a crisis with my music. Since those university days playing coffee shops with Thede and Pacific Blank, I had been playing music regularly with others for many years. Saudi Arabia was packed with recording and jamming, putting out some albums and having a blast playing and writing daily. Then on the road after with my new ukulele, it was largely the same, with plenty of hours a day messing around on my new instrument. When I got back, I tried to start up a similar weekly musical event and succeeded for a while but that was just covers, which are super fun but obviously not much of a creative outlet for me.
I remember kind of blurting it out to Alana one day that I wanted to be a musician, but had no idea how to go about that on my own. I tried playing solo in a coffee shop, a mix of guitar and uke, but it felt to me like most of my songs were too hard to play live or, more commonly, better in their recorded versions with the overdubs and harmonies and layers. It felt like my music was a bit fussy and tedious, and that led to a legitimate reckoning for me as to what should come next.
At that time, which is now around 10 years ago, I had already started to think about what to do on my next album, and I knew I wanted something bigger and louder. I had an idea for Nest that needed a drummer and bassist and keyboards, for example, as well as plenty of other songs that needed more than my own limited abilities as merely a solo artist. Without a band to support me, I just became so frustrated with my own music that I stopped making it. I just sort of hit “Pause” and assumed I’d find a band eventually.
And so, I instead pivoted into just creative writing, doing a lot of poetry and short stories—one of which was published in a lit journal and is in the library now—and had fun, but eventually I started to overthink everything in my story writing processes and it became far more stressful than fun so I bowed out of prose too. I then committed myself to my career, and spent many years going to school until I eventually achieved my dream job: being a high school teacher! But teachers get plenty of breaks and summers off, which meant I suddenly had all that time to fill.
That is when I first thought about my “musician” days as something weirdly past tense and in quotes for some reason. Ever since I got my first guitar as a teenager, I’d been writing music. It was all I cared about for so long, and helped me process all the big events in my own life, and I was always immensely proud of it too. And then suddenly, in my early-to-mid 30s, I became embarrassed by the label for some reason; it was mostly because I hadn’t actually written any new songs in so long, I worried that I had lost the ability to do so well. I had sort of put up a mental block around it, compartmentalized it and forgotten it had ever been my own “reason to wake up”—I’d written such great songs before, why couldn’t I still write great songs now? This album, whose title reflects a way of reverting to the old ways of doing things, would be my chance to prove that I still had it.
Now over time my work has become even more conceptual, and as a massive fan of the album format, I have weird rules that I enjoy adhering too, like starting and ending an album on instrumental tracks, or having a sort of thesis statement in mind when I am putting a project together, and at first I was a bit worried that this album would be merely a jumble of tracks without much cohesion or order to it.
The only sort of guiding light I felt compelled to follow was what angsty emo teen Craig had always dreamed off: something bigger, louder, and with a distinctly maximalist approach, and according to that criteria, this one is a really big snarling noisy hit. And after having so many of my personal favourite tracks deep in the vault for so long—tracks here date from high school over 20 years ago—being able to finally give them a place to shine and be shared is really extremely gratifying. Instead of just a bunch of tracks, it feels more akin to a greatest hits collection of my solo work that has only existed in my mind for so long. Having finally finished this monster project feels like a surreal accomplishment, and the fact that it ended up so good just adds to the joy.
It’s a pretty wild ride. I hope you enjoy it too.
Thanks for listening.
Lackaday Marvelous
St Paddy’s Day, second year university. A group of my musician friends had agreed to come to the campus recording studio for a bit of a practice session. There was an upcoming assignment that required recording drums with a ton of microphones you had to set up yourself and I wanted to practice ahead of time. Once the gear was in place, we hit record and just started messing around. My friend Bobby Foster was on drums, I played electric guitar, and together we started to just hammer out some noise. Then out of that chaos slowly appeared a little guitar riff, a fairly basic chord progression but punctuated with a lot of nifty palm-mutes. Bobby quickly established a slick beat around that as it cycled to a sort of chorus and then back again, until after a minute or so we brought it all to a halt with the just some repeated bass notes wrapping up the melody. I so vividly remember that little moment as Bobby and I realized what a fun little jam we’d just created, and were couldn’t believe our luck when the recording of it turned out so well.
In this newly minted edition of Lackaday Marvelous, the rhythm guitar is playing the exact same riffs and chords as the original jam, no changes there. Although I didn’t have any drummers around this time, a bit of tambourine adds the percussive backbone necessary to give the song its propulsive drive. The best new addition though is easily the screaming, muscular lead guitar soaring over it, whose sharp fiery edges slice across the song in a gnarly, angular never-ending lick. Interestingly enough, that bold and confident riff actually interpolates a vocal melody I had prepared for another version with full lyrics. While that abandoned concept did have some potential, I think the song still works better as an instrumental, and in particular one with such explosive and driving electrical charge. This brief and hair-raising little nugget now acts as the perfect bite-sized introduction to an album loaded with electric tracks and other big ideas.
The Fleece is Dry
This melancholy little track packs a ton of deeply personal meaning into its lyrics, but I believe stands out as a concept that we all can relate to: the sense that life is slipping you by, and suddenly we’re going to wake up in the future with nothing to show for our brief time here. I didn’t always feel this way though. As a young hipster into underground music, I often felt like anything “mainstream” was embarrassing and only good for heaping scorn and mockery upon. I went to some cool shows of course, but as I got older I kept saying no to any sort of pop culture, films, or concerts I thought was “stupid”, for it just seemed like the cool thing to do. Basically if Pitchfork didn’t like it, neither did I. But eventually as I started to hear from my friends who went to those events I’d refused on principle that the show was so amazing and perfect and they had this vibrant experience they had all shared together, I started to feel like I had missed out. That sort of gradual sickening in the stomach of anxiety and regret was paired with a vision of myself as a bitter angry old man who stuck to his principles his entire life, hating every single new trend and every single generation with such fury and bitterness that you had to wonder, ‘Hey man, what’s your problem?” That nightmare of a life wasted for no reason was probably one of the most important paradigm shifting moments in my life, as it has led to an era free from any past regret whatsoever, only joy and excitement in whatever I am doing now.
The title of this song references a story in the Old Testament about Gideon asking God for advice, but demanding some sort of physical proof of the message. And so Gideon first leaves a fleece out overnight, and asks God for it to become soaked in dew while the ground around it remains dry, which is exactly what happens. But then, just in case it was a fluke, Gideon asks God a second time, but this time for the reverse, a dry fleece and wet ground—God of course comes through again: the fleece is now dry.
As a Christian kid, that story seemed to mean that we can always ask God for help and he’ll answer, if we sometimes still doubt his answer and keep demanding more and more; it paints him as a generous, benevolent and easy to access deity with never-ending patience in the face of such human weaknesses. As an atheist adult, I can see that like a lot of Bible stories, the question he was asking was usually about conquering and killing and raping and pillaging some enemy, which was always justified by verses like this where God told you—repeatedly—to do it. The fleece is dry, let’s go slaughter some Midianites! Plus the stories always have some sort of menacing implication that not following God risks death and destruction yourself, or for you and your people to be cursed for such foolhardy human hubris.
Realizing just how much depraved twisted nightmarish darkness is present in so much of God’s characteristics and demands, which he dares to call “love” for him, was a major reason why I couldn’t follow such a toxic gaslighter anymore.
I am someone who really needs to relearn a lesson from time to time, which is how this song also extends beyond gentle self-admonishment/pep talk into something more specific for my music and the themes for this album too. I have always had creative projects that for me where ways to process my life and wrestle with the new experiences and ups and downs that go with it. However, after putting my music on pause for career reasons for a while, I forgot how vital all that was to me in what I chose to spend my days doing, and what I chose to ignore. After COVID suddenly made it feel like years of my life had been stolen with so little to show for it, I remembered my music, the album I had always planned on making, and all the work I had done to prep for that over a decade ago.
Suddenly I couldn’t fathom why I ever stopped. But as this song reminds me, it is easy to forget those lessons. I have things to do before I reach my Death Expected. The fleece is dry. Time to get going.
How many just like you, I wonder?
A soul that started old, but isn't getting any younger
Muddled memories fading fast, one after another
But you still don't have a clue
The world moved on without you
Far too many hours spent lost deep inside your head
No one likes a martyr if you're not already dead
Wanted that tattoo, but then you chickened out instead
Could you smile for us?
Life's not that serious.
The hardest part is
I feel like I’m just getting started
And I’m not ready to turn in yet,
Cause I’ve been
Resurrected
Halfway to my death expected
With halfway left to go
Still halfway to go
Half a race to go
Begging God for signals that you're happily ignoring
You sweat over confessions, but they're really rather boring
Falling off the wagon and mistaking it for soaring
Your answer's there to find
You got your sign.
You've been wasting time.
The fleece is dry.
Daughter of Futility
My musical influences changed very drastically over the years. My idyllic childhood on a cattle farm in southern Alberta obviously gave me not just a bit of a cowboy drawl but also a love of country music that is apparent in all my early songs. By the time I hit high school however I had already become a member of the angsty emo kid demographic, with a predictably melodramatic and overwrought phase in my oeuvre to follow. My patron saint was Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, whose early work’s commitment to lo-fi scratchy recordings filled with background noise, artistically inspired emo lyrics, and his equally lovely and shouty vocals seemed to say everything I wanted to but didn’t know how. That foundational influence—along with Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie—still has a profound impact on me to this day, in particular with the sort of studio ideologies of rejecting slick big-studio sounds in favour of raw and vulnerable imperfection. Though most of my emo deep cuts are best left in the vault, a few still seem worthy of attention.
This new track begins with Daughter of Futility, a fairly typical example of my emo screeds about love and sadness. However, I always thought that the weird dissonant guitar chords I stole from Radiohead went well with the lyrics in creating a vibe worthy of the dramatic emo slice and guyliner I was never brave enough to actually attempt. Once that song is almost over, though, in careens Win-Win, a fairly simple acoustic line written with Ben Thede near the end of our partnership; it originally included a final sort of chanted section that didn’t make the cut here. This political satire is about “Terrorist Christmas…where it’s better to give than receive,” and though most of our past ideological opinions usually deserve to remain in the past, this one I still think works because a) it points the finger at people weaponizing any religion or faction for violent ends, and b) because I think they are also funny and clever lyrics that hold together quite nicely. I’ve included the lyrics from both songs below in their entirety to let you decide if I was wrong.
Draw in closer
Feel her breath
Hot as the guilt flowing in my veins
Hide in fog
Don’t cry out
Never let your conscience come back in
Forever feeling
You might die
Slowly running out of very last breaths
So draw in closer
Feel her last one
Chilling fires as you watch her rest
Don’t let her know your name
Keep it a secret among friends
So the daughter of futility might
Come to see you once again
Then draw in closer
Feel the death
The icy sting of reason in her kiss
Trapped in darkness
Dying blind
The daughter knew that it would end like this
She never told you her secret
You thought you two were just friends
That tragic miscalculation will
Be the reason that your journey
If only for the moment you could
See yourself collapsing there
As the daughter works her magic
And binds you down with that unfading stare
And someone gave that final choice
They salvaged your soul, and told you to choose
The daughter of futility will win
With conscience conquered, you will lose
So lose everything
Be satisfied
That the daughter of futility
Was there beside you when you died.
Stain the stainless
We’ll both die painless
Blissfully inert until it hits us
Seeing is believing
Hearing is deceiving
Better to give than to be receiving
C4 taffy
And leaden candy
Terrorist Christmas, everyone’s happy
Old men tired of aging well
Find solace in the hidden shell
Strangers bid a last farewell
As the Reaper appears
Both will have to wait and see
If their religion did deceive
It’s Terrorist Christmas
And it’s better to give
Along Came A Spider
I took some digital recording classes at university in order to learn more about the processes involved as well as gain 24/7 access to the campus studio. Both Along Came a Spider and Gulag Politics were final projects for those courses, but while I was eventually able to complete a great version of the latter for my earlier album, Villa 15, this other track proved far more resistant to any workable evolutions in the studio. The original version of Spider is shockingly pitchy and painful to listen to, but I loved the lyrics and guitar parts so much I knew the track was worth returning to. And so I did, again and again over the years, although every time it just never seemed to coalesce into anything worthwhile. Eventually though, when I would perform the song live, I started to add in little breaks after the chorus, where the guitar pauses and my voice alone remains. The first of those pauses was quite brief, but the second one was meant to be held as long as possible, really committing to the note, waiting until my voice cracked and faltered, and only then I would finally bring the guitar back in for the outro. I loved the very provocative tension that ending gives the song in a live setting, and so used that as the basis for this latest iteration, which also layers in some mournful icy blue guitars to imbue it with the futile desperation and frailty it was intended to evoke. There might be a seductive web of temptation, but it’s clearly my own weaknesses that let me get close enough to be ensnared by it. The weaver has won, but surrender was mine to offer.
I began my original song with a documentary excerpt about spider sexual rituals that I added sound effects to and enjoyed so much I kept it here as a post-song bonus. However, about the time that I was finalizing this song for the Atavism album, I had recently read a work about feminist issues in zoology that left a huge impression on me and that process. Bitch by Lucy Cooke is a deeply hilarious and poignant look at so much of the field that was suffering from patriarchal priorities and other misogynistic shortcomings. In fact, precisely the same rituals in my sound clip about a male spider sacrificing himself “all for the sake of sex” were discussed as a way of re-examining sexual relationships from the female’s perspective. So much of that field’s historical focus was overwhelmingly on males, the intriguing and active ones, with little serious attention paid to the boring passive females; that and other grotesque chauvinistic dismissals over the centuries have poisoned and distracted zoological inquiries to such a fundamental degree that to this day there remains almost no research on things like female genitalia or reproductive habits. I kept the clip in because I still think it’s funny and fits with the song, but I wish there were some other way I could make it more equitable to the female perspectives that are still sorely lacking in those documentaries. In a world so at ease with the patriarchal and phallus-obsessed status quo, I would hate to think my juvenile little inclusion was making that greater problem any worse.
Along came a spider
To weave a web across my window
And catch my curiosity
Or distract me for a minute or so
The tapestry so delicate
Seemed to hang surreal in the air
Daring me to investigate
Suspend belief, surrender to the snare
Don’t remind me
Of what’s behind me
No excuses
For being reclusive
That venomous scent you sent to please me
It’s no wonder that I always fall in love so easy
How the angelic fiend
Has laid a lure with only web between
Every patterned tease
Hides a warning sign I should’ve seen
And so I’ll take the bait
And try to tiptoe across your symmetry
Knowing that I will just trip up
And have to wait for you to come and finish me
Finish me
Thoughts Were Thought
Thoughts Were Thought has technically already appeared on an album already—me and Dave Knudsen’s side project, the Mutawa—but I have been trying to find a new home for it on my solo projects ever since, and Atavism is absolutely the perfect spot.
I wrote this song with Thede in our usual fashion, with him playing a song section on repeat while I came up with the lyrics. Originally his part was this very cool and intricate sort of bluesy riffs that created a very ornate yet muscular vibe. Years later though without Thede around, I had to come up with this iteration which is admittedly far simpler but still captures the same general tone. What I absolute love in the recording though are the big soaring choruses with some of my favourite snarling overdriven solos that filled the space with delightful little fiery electrical storms to complement and contrast the vocal melodies. The catchy little acoustic riffs that start and end also took forever for me to nail but were absolutely worth the time.
As for the lyrics, they were written in our big party house during university. It tells the tale of a misunderstanding at a house party we had thrown, and originally had a long pause at the end before I muttered a b-word, of the only times I had ever sworn in my lyrics. But though my vulgar, knuckle-dragging younger self thought it was hilarious at the time, every time I would here it the joke became far less funny. And so I later excised it from the track resulting in the “remastered version” I have included here.
This is a thank you note for you
When you came over and left confused
When you did things I guess you didn’t mean
Or didn’t mean to do
This is a thank you to you
I loved the way you touched my arm
Gave me your best look of innocence and charm
We played all of your favorite mind games
And though I meant no harm
Thanks for all that look of alarm
But if you slip between my mismatched sheets
Expect that you’ll be there with me
You blame me so I guess that I’ve been caught
Thinking all those crazy thoughts were thought
I’ll be expecting some sort of reply
A thank you note for letting you stop by
I’ll be holding my breath until then
Till I turn blue and find
Only your apparent good-bye
If only you would call and we could talk about it
Me being nice and you walking out
Or you could just keep acting like I’ve been shot
For thinking all those crazy thoughts I thought
Now here’s a thank you in advance
For never giving me a second chance
Blaming me is just not true
I was only thinking what you wanted me to
So thank you
Thank you
Nest (Dream Big)
Nest dates back to first year university when Thede and I were living in dorms and writing music like crazy. I recall our typical process—Thede plays a guitar part endlessly while I work on lyrics—that we decided to augment with rum-and-co*kes in hope of evoking some stream-of-conscious-style space. Originally there were many many pages of angsty and meandering poetry along with these sections that were more coherent and focused. However, like most of our songs around that time, I couldn’t actually play Thede’s parts, so if we didn’t end up recording somewhere, it was eventually lost in the fog. I really loved this song though, so Thede taught me how to play the version now finally captured here. All those strange and hypnotic jazzy grooves were pure Thede, but I love the layered solos that I added at the end. It was tough to decide what sort of textures I wanted to include here, but in the end I love the almost clean sound with a lot of subtle clouds darkening the edges; it really adds to the complexity of that extended section.
On a personal level, this song represents several massive paradigm shifts in my own life. The issues began when Thede abruptly decided not to return to Canada over Christmas during third year, forcing me to become a reluctant solo artist. This did mean that not only did I get to record on my own and develop my own quirks and impulses, even if my skills in those areas were still quite nascent. However, having always played as part of a group, and so performing solo always felt like it was missing something; without harmonies and overdubs the live versions felt naked and inferior when compared to the studio versions. It felt like as my solo recordings were hitting its peak with the uke-centric Vaya Con Dios, my live show had become increasingly staid and boring. And so for the next album after VCD, I envisioned collecting all the songs like Nest that I thought should have full band to play them properly, and using that to bring life back to my uninspired live shows. There was only 1 problem: I didn’t have a band! There was the jammy side-project Lago del Gato, which I did try to tap into for VCD, but at that point even that band was coming to an end as the members pursued other goals or moved away like Thede. Therefore, I found myself having to make some tough decisions: to continue to play solo, and hope to pursue a career that way? Or try something else for a while? It was a hard time for sure, but at that time music had lost enough of its joy and so a different pursuit seemed like the right call. I put a pin in all those music projects and decided to try writing short stories and poetry instead. I joined a writing group, got up at 5am every morning before work to write, and after many years of attempts and false starts managed to produce a story good enough to get published—it’s in the Vancouver library! So cool! But after that, as I kept trying to find new story ideas, and even got a good start on a novel done, I found myself starting to burnout on that particular artistic treadmill. As I pondered some other creative output, I heard the siren call of the studio calling me home once again. And so, here I am, back at it, making music, working on Nest and all the rest but with a much more mature attitude towards the process again. It’s once again something I do for myself, to process, to burn some stress, and most importantly, to have fun. So far, it’s working, and it feel so good to be back.
Fly
Like gravity can’t stop you
And even when you fail
You’ll still see more of God’s green earth
Than mortals ever will.
For every bird
There was an egg
Fragile and unbroken
For every egg
There was a nest
Comforting, unshaken
For every nest
There was a mother
Diligent and pure
And for every mother
There’s a girl
That will never get all she deserves.
Think
Like no one else before you
Soon everybody will
Wink
At anyone you want to
Or no one ever will
Sing
Like no one else can hear you
And everybody will
For every dream
There was a dreamer
Youthful and naïve
For every dreamer
There’s a muse
Mischievous and free
For every dreamer
That gave up on his dream
There’s one to take his place.
Cause every dreamer
That ever dared to dream
Deserves a little grace.
Musical Chairs
Gram Ringrose had a huge impact on me growing up. A master gardener who cultivated a truly breathtaking backyard packed with exotic plants and colourful blooms, Gram also made the world’s best cream puffs and shortbread, all of which made the usually 18-hour plus drives from Alberta to her house in Delta worth it. Growing up during the Depression made her resourceful and pragmatic, as well as magnificently self-sufficient. One of my favourite memories with her was when well into her 80s she taught me how to use a chainsaw. Sadly, in her later years she began to suffer semi-regular seizures, which she really wished we would not make a big deal out of. This song alludes to the first seizure that I witnessed, wandering through her house, calling for her, only to find her collapsed on the ground in her study. As she would remind us every time we had to call the hospital, she didn’t want to trouble anyone; she was happy just to drink her tea, enjoy her cigarettes, and revel in those jaw-dropping landscapes she conjured into life. I was so happy that she was not the odd one out that day, and did in fact stay in the game for many more years. Still though, I always miss stopping by to see Gram, loading up on her outstanding homemade treats, and running around her remarkable yard. Those memories are the best ones.
This song features some accordion in the latter half that was originally supposed to be continuous throughout. I practiced the parts daily for weeks and weeks on end, trying to come up with good parts on an instrument that I find incredibly difficult to play. And then finally when I decided it was time to start recording, that very day the accordion suddenly began to emanate this piercing high-pitched squeaky whistle on every pull, making the poor thing nigh-on unusable. I was absolutely crushed by timing of this cruel mechanical betrayal, but had come so far that I still tried to record and somehow salvage it digitally. After some manipulation I was in fact able to minimize the din, but it really just made the instrument sound so weird that I cut most of it anyway. The rest of the song still works, but in my mind a person who could actually play the accordion would have been a far better choice.
Three chairs around the table
Three empty seats to fill
Cigarettes and shortbread
Tea by the windowsill
Four cups
Four saucers
Someone’ll be left out
They’ll sit down
And hear it
Hear everybody shout out loud
We came to leave some presents on the doorstep,
Maybe we could stay for a little while?
I stood
In silence
Not sure of what to do
You lying there on the floor
(Your ghost in the guest room
I hope you’ll understand why we had to call them in
Please don’t let them interrupt your tea
Just lay there
Embarrassed
So we can sort this out
Looks to me like you were
Almost the odd one out
Almost the odd one out
Almost the odd one out
Almost the odd one out
I know that you’ve been playing for a long time now,
But can’t you last just one more round for us?
With You
Every time I am working on an album, I draft a long list of potential songs to include that acts as a way of organizing the whole process. This involves scouring my master lists of songs, poetry, and recorded demos that I have created so I don’t forget anything, looking for something that might be worth pursuing. When I started putting together some of those early ideas for Atavism, I had like 20-25 songs to consider at one point. To help those decisions, I make little notes beside each one like “include!” or “consider, but not super important.” On that entire list, there was only one track curtly described as “not good! Don’t include!”; it was of course this one, With You. Most songs include caveats or limitations, like “keep the verses as-is, but rewrite the rest,” or “good music, cut lyrics and make instrumental.” But not With You; this song was apparently so entirely without merit, utterly hateful and unforgivable from start to finish as to demand special recognition just for its pure repugnance. And so, having completely forgotten about the song as I worked on the rest of the album, I was a bit surprised when I came across a single file on an old hard drive demonstrating that I had at once at least tried to make the song work. Curious, I opened the file and listened. It was a demo of the entire song, guitar and vocals, as well as a banjo part. To my absolute amazement, the song sounded pretty great. My original notes mentioned that I thought the banjo should be re-recorded, but this iteration, with its carefree imperfection, was clearly already good enough. As I then checked the lyrics and chords, the memories surrounding the writing process started to return. When I bought my banjo years ago I had wanted a song to record it with, so I wrote this love song with simple chords and structures to try out the new instrument. I had done this with my first harmonica and Sad Eyes, and that thrown together placeholder track became one of my all-time favourites. Now With You sadly did not quite attain the heights of my previous experiments; the lyrics in the verses were quite evocative and charming, but the rest was mostly just a big cliched mess of bland filler. All that considered though, having heard it aloud for the first time since I wrote it, I felt like it kind of worked. I rather enjoyed the ramshackle simplicity and earnestness behind it. And so, I added a host of other voices singing along like a drunken, off-kilter choir and big bold swathes of harmonica sunshine to the acoustic and banjo parts. To my delight, the song has now emerged from its dark cocoon not as half-baked greige beast but a wondrous, catchy, joyful butterfly. A cliched metaphor for a cliched song, but somehow, for me, it kind of works.
When I look back on all the years we’ve had
I can’t imagine life without you
Since that night in the park, playing Frisbee in the dark,
I’ve wanted to grow old with our hands together
Our future was uncertain, but I’ve never felt better
When you and I said let’s face it together
I was holding on to something
I always knew was true
I just want to spend my whole life with you
There’s no alternative, no substitute
I just want to spend my whole life with you
It all could be traced to the choices that we faced
And our belief that life could be better
So in a sweater in the sun, I married you at 21
With our fake minister and our true love
I still remember what you whispered in my ear
That you and I could just disappear
I was holding on to something
I always knew was true
I just want to spend my whole life with you
Even after all these years, I still love my little spoon
I just want to spend my whole life with you
I gave you everything, and I’d do it again
Just to spend my whole life with my best friend
Hapax Legomena
Hapax legomena refers to something that only appears once within a text, and so it felt like an apt title for an instrumental based on this solitary old banjo recording. I am obsessed with Nels Cline, and bought a slide to maybe emulate parts of his stylistic features. This song taught me that slide is HARD, but since I had to get my money’s worth, I included what I had to. The track begins with a chaotic riff crusted in sludge that rises out of the muck before making way for the banjo. The rest of the track is basically a bit of a dirty campaign fought by these two gnarled leads, one slide and one rat-a-tat blast of electric gunfire all starkly rendered in night vision. Tying together those wildly disparate chunks into something even slightly listenable was a massive time-consuming slog with endless headaches and false-starts. But the atonal intro, like being caught in the open by mortars and artillery and somehow remaining unscathed, felt so visceral and terrifying that I had to make it work.
To fit with the theme of one-offs, I knew I would need a unique and singular artwork as well, and who else could I possibly choose but the legendary Ashton the Bus Rat. Alana and I were headed home on the bus late when I noticed something wriggling around the coat pocket of the man beside us. The man then pulled out the tiny baby rat and asked us if we wanted to say hi to Ashy. We said yes, and he handed the rat over. The man asked if we liked him, and we responded with squeals with pure joy at this perfect little angel. And in that moment, the man said, “Ok, he’s yours!” then got off the bus. As what had happened started to sink in, others on the bus asked, “Did he just give you a rat?!”, and in shock we realized that he had indeed.
After rechristening him Ashton, we started to panic slightly at what to do with him for the night and then for all the ones after that too. We have had just about every type of pet there is, including hamsters, guinea pigs, and bunnies, but never a rat. At first, we had to leave him in the bathtub with some food and old shoe to live in, and because the cage we bought had gaps in the bars he easily escaped from, we decided to make him a “free-range rat” within the apartment. We fed him whatever we ate, and so he had quite a decadent diet; for his birthday, I made him a little rat crepe with whipped cream and compote. Quite unlike other similar pets, Ashton was like an incredibly social toddler with boundless energy who loved to hang out with us doing whatever, as well as explore his new home and get into mischief.
Early on in life, we watched Ashton climb to the top of our closet, way over our heads. At first, we thought he’d get stuck, and so brought him back down. Be he crawled back up again. Then we saw him perch on the edge of the shelf, do some mental calculations, and then, very abruptly, he jumped! 6 feet down he fell, and we gasped and ran to check on him. Our little daredevil landed squarely in the laundry hamper, and was not only totally fine, he was better than fine: he was now fully alive, electrified and addicted to that thrilling jolt of adrenaline. He headed right back up to the top, and jumped again and again, for hours sometimes. This hobby of his lasted for months without incident until one day, we heard a rather sickening CRACK come from the bedroom. We watched Ashton emerged gingerly from the closet, wincing and with a pretty dramatic limp. The vet told us he fractured his hip but was otherwise unscathed. Ashton had to retire from diving but soon found other hobbies to keep himself busy.
Because of the building’s no-pet policy, I was nervous about hiding Ashton the stowaway from the landlord. But I’m so glad we kept him: we became besties who spent every moment at home together. But after only two years, he had some sort of stroke that made it hard for him to walk, let alone climb anything. The vet gave us a CBD prescription, and that night we brushed his fur, and all went to sleep together, but he would not wake up again. In shock after discovering him the next day, I was unable to stop tears flowing down my face. I walked to work crying, hid in the bathroom crying, tried to teach crying, and finally just had to go ask my boss for a day off, still crying. I couldn’t even speak, all I did was show her a picture of Ashton and she was like, “Oh yeah, cute. How is Ashton?” and I started to bawl. So home I went, to a house that no longer had him waiting to run over when I came home, so excited to see me, to climb up my body and give me little kisses and tell me all about his day. It took a long, long time to get over that hole in my heart, left there by the world’s best little buddy. I still miss you Ashton, but I am so glad you chose us. Life would have been so empty without you. I’m sure you’ll reincarnate into some other delightful critter with a big heart and some other death-defying tendencies. Please make sure you stop by to say hi, you are always welcome.
All Ablaze
As part of my teaching degree, I signed up for a very fun class on how to teach poetry that included writing and submitting poems on a range of prompts. While most of the work was not necessarily in need of publication—save for Hot New Trends, an equal parts silly-and-poignant poem that, like it’s protagonist trying to make it in the universe after having his planet crushed by some careless alien lane-changing, has not yet found a home—I still felt like bits and pieces of the texts might be worth adapting in some form. And so, one night I came up with the concept of drawing from those poems to create an acapella song, with repeating overlapping parts. That morning, with the idea still fresh in my mind, I scoured my poetry list for options and found some perfect candidates, including the titular piece about being trapped in a house on fire. After assembling the words for each section, I decided to record it before the moment of inspiration passed. A few hours later, I had completed All Ablaze in record time. And in an even more fateful twist, I noticed that I had unintentionally recorded an actual fire truck in the background of one of the parts, which of course I left in. It all happened so fast, I almost can’t believe it’s real, but clearly this song was meant to be.
Paper covers rock
Scissors slices paper
Fire swallows building
Rules shifting fast
Dodging falling walls
Panic slowing time
Cinder stinging eyes
Smoke burning lungs
Hot becoming pain
Fleeing ruined home
Blaze removing options
No solutions left
Wanna stay up here?
It's warmer here
It's warmer here
We could go down there
It’s warmer here
It’s warmer here
It seems like it’s close
Your friend’ll come
Your friend’ll come
It seems like its close
Almost there but it’s not
Almost there but it’s not
All of my friends are here
All of us
All of my friends were here
But now not
I’m shaking I’m so nervous
I’m shaking I’m so scared
It’s like there’s good news?
No.
It’s like there’s good news?
No.
I’m shaking
I’m shaking
We need to go down where it’s lower
It’s not fair
It’s not fair
We need to go down where it’s lower
But somethings wrong
Somethings wrong
I don't want them to put me under.
I don't want that to happen to me
I don't want them to put me under please!
Scylla and Charybdis
In ancient mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were fearsome monstrosities in the Mediterranean Sea. By most accounts, Scylla appeared to be mostly human but with six vicious snarling dog heads around her waist, whereas Charybdis was a daughter of Poseidon who was punished for stealing and eating some of Heracles’ cattle by being transformed into a perilous, inescapable whirlpool. In that era, “steering between Scylla and Charybdis” had the vaguely similarly meaning as the modern notion of being “stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
I have always loved those names for the way the jagged syllables themselves have a rather sharp and ominous energy to them, which seems to fit this murky and chaotic ukulele piece. The reference to a duo makes even more sense when you understand how the song came to be. I made two lengthy demo recordings of the song on my phone while in Sevilla, Spain, which is why you can clearly hear the children and dogs and other city noise echoes from the hard cobble-stoned streets outside the window. Those recordings were barely audible among the mess of the background noise, so in fact I was truly shocked when I was able to snap them a bit more into focus with a bit of GarageBand wizardry and combine each of those 5-min single takes into this one mellifluous whole. Scylla and Charybdis have returned to entice and menace once more.
The Angels Came To Take You
I have very fond memories of Mom’s house in Cloverdale, and in particular things like walking over to the rodeo every year for a bit of free music, fresh donuts, and relaxation in the hot summer sun. That house was the one she lived in before having to go to a home, and I really wanted to make something special to honour her life there, filled with happiness and grief and everything between. And so, over seemingly endless poetic trial and error, I finally honed in on the concept here, that the friendly angels came down to get her, and we shared some stories and boasts about the best Mom ever. I knew I wanted it to be happy, like her, and so the ukulele was the right choice there. I wrote it for her while she was alive, but also knew that I would play it for her funeral, and so had to be the best it could be to for that special day as well. In the end, I think that song did everything I hoped for and more: it neatly encapsulates everything about her as a warm, kind, and resilient person, while also evoking the massive church services we’d attend every summer at camp down in Montana—one of our family’s happiest times for sure. The song originally titled Ascension Over the Agriplex had grown to capture every quirk, every tendency, every gift, every hug, every lesson she taught me, as a way to show her that we knew how awesome and selfless and caring and gentle she was. That was what I wanted to capture, and I knew at the funeral, she was up there smiling and laughing and dancing along with the very same angels.
The angels came to take you
When you were not around
Such celestial guests
Deserve our best
So I offered them your cheese buns
Straight from the oven
[Spoken: They were so good too! So much better than your bran muffins unfortunately, but your pickles and rolled pancakes were also pretty legendary]
The things you found important
Kindness and family
Never making fun of anyone
Or ever saying “I hate”
You said “its not my favourite”
[Spoken: That was the rule! Probably her best, made it safe to do anything without being mocked, right? Very sensible…]
And God I’ll miss your smile
The one I got from you
Hope to see it before you go
With those gates open wide
Every trumpet sounds when you're inside
Every Host will know
You're home.
You worked so hard to feed us right
Though we teased your article-itis
Rules so cutting edge
Every meal had raw veg
But nothing concerned you more
Than the state of our bowels.
Spoken: Bowel health was mental health, you swore years before it was cool! no faecal transplants or probiotics back then, just you and the poop, ahead the game]
What a woman of conviction
For God and family
And yet to see you grin
When the Canucks win,
Your team has done it again
We know where your values lie
[Spoken: You are probably the loudest of the fans too, they can hear you hollering down the block, that’s a lot of passion for the game]
And God I’ll miss your smile
The one I got from you
Hope to see it before you go
With those gates open wide
Every trumpet sounds when you're inside
Every Host will know
You're home.
That God’s faithful servant is home.
Let’s all get on our feet now to celebrate this astounding lady right here okay?
It’s finally your turn to go
There won't be any sorrow for you
Just us left behind with this deep hole in our hearts and lives
Missing you like crazy
But you, well you deserve some applause that’s for sure
You made it!
You got it!
You stayed true to yourself and knew there was a reward waiting for you
All the everlasting love you sang about
The everlasting peace you knew was waiting
The everlasting gift that you saw on the horizon
That is why you did what you did and why you gave
Every last piece of your soul
Every last piece of yourself for that future
You knew it was worth it
Day in day out
Others have gone astray but not you
Not now
Not ever
You stayed on the straight and narrow
Just doing what you believed was right
What you believed was worth living for
Dying for
The truth that you wanted
Everyone to hear
Everyone to rejoice
To remember
To keep in our hearts like you did in yours
You lived this incredible life full of love and patience and sacrifice
Because that is who you are
Never unkind
Never selfish
Never doubting
And that is what you we remember
The smile
The happiness
And the joy you felt every day
You wanted to spread that message and
You did
You did
You did
I miss you now
So badly
but I’m so happy you are my mom
So happy to be in your family
To be beside you as you make your journey
To be with you here at the end of it all
I hope you know that
It's hard to say these things when you have the chance
But I love you Mom.
And I’m so proud.
So so proud
I hope you know that, Mom.
God I hope you know that.
Aphasia
When Andrew Jehan told me about his raw footage of a guy in a train yard and asked me to provide him with a song for it, I started to write this song from scratch—thus the original title, You Can’t Dodge A Train. However, I remember getting so angry about the song process pretty quickly, feeling like I was maybe trying to force a song into existence that I was starting to become less confident about, or that it might be a ton of work to finish and still not that good. The original sort of plan in my mind was to basically create my own choir of just my voice as it was singing a melody that I would write as I went. So the vocal parts I have there now were all I managed to finish at the time, and it was admittedly a fairly tedious way to go about doing something that I figured normal instruments might do better anyway. You can imagine then what an absolutely massive shock it was when I re-listened to it as I was putting this album together and realized what a gem I had. I literally changed zero percent of what I had done before, just extended the ending out a bit to allow for more ideas in the final ending part.
Because my albums have to start and end with some sort of instrumentals, I knew that I would have to stick to that rule here too. I was deeply inspired as well by Kanye’s best song, “Runaway”, which has an autotuned robot singing a devastating gut-punch of a vocal solo at the end that has no words either, just the melody. So I recorded Alana and I having a conversation about our day with all sorts of silly, cutesy lovey-dovey stuff in it, and layered in about 7-8 different versions of that track with thick effects on each of them. That’s why I thought this new title about a condition where people struggle to speak was so perfect; as the vocals appear and dissipate and echo and twist, you can hear bits of it, but it gets lost again into the sort of happy, pleasant murmuring.
Now as someone who might have to deal with this in the future himself, the original concept I thought should also include sharp sudden jagged and raw cuts of arguments and angry fights to reflect how terrible that would feel to be trapped and unable to communicate, much like my poor mother was for so many years—I even drew art depicting someone crying bitter tears to match that inner conflict. However, as someone who never actually gets angry about anything, not even these sorts of early situations I find myself in now, I rightly abandoned the bitterness entirely.
All that is left is love and joy and tender warm cozy snuggles at the end of another blissful day. The grin I get from seeing Alana come home, from telling my students about my rat, and from deciding what to eat for dinner—that is the perfect happy ending to this album, but luckily for me, as I mentioned in The Fleece is Dry, it is not my ending yet, just like halfway it seems. I still have plenty of things to do yet. And I can’t wait to get started.
