Ever Forward (2021)

In early 2021, I ended up taking a leave of absence from my day job to deal with some anxiety issues.

One of the things that helped get me through this period and feel more like myself again was playing music. Even though I've only been doing it for just over a year and I'm still very much an enthusiastic amateur, it provides a tremendous feeling of calm and focus for me in a way that few other things can. It's honestly the closest I ever get to a state of meditation.

Because I'd been more disappointed than not in my vocals on Driven Like a Motor, I decided to leave these all in the instrumental state. Despite how much writing and vocal recording I've done in my life, the process of improvising, revising and arranging music seems completely at odds with creating lyrics and singing them over this stuff. Like they're different parts of my brain, largely incompatible with one another. This is not to say that I'll only ever make instrumentals, but right now that's what I'm most comfortable with.

I'm pretty pleased with how these 16 tracks turned out, overall — I'd been slowly evolving a sound that works for me, and I think I built on that here and let it grow a little further. Going forward I'll probably play around more with a variety of aural aesthetics (my favorite bands never stay in one sonic place for very long), but it was nice to explore and develop a baseline "signature sound." I think I'll feel more comfortable/confident wandering away from it now, knowing that I have it to fall back on if I get in over my head.

I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked during my sabbatical, but I also realized that never should have been the goal. When I focused more on the journey (playing a little music every day) I was pleased to discover that I'd arrived at a destination (a completed creative project) without even really trying. It was an extremely cathartic experience.

Driven Like a Motor (2021)

I got my first bass in early 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic sent us all indoors for over a year. So I used that copious time to start learning how to play and then, gradually, how to compose my own music. I ended up very pleased with the results instrumentally — I feel like I managed to stretch my novice abilities into some pretty interesting places. Lyrically and vocally... I'm less pleased. I've never claimed to be a singer (previous musical efforts notwithstanding) and I think maybe further attempts may involve me enlisting someone else to handle that end of things.

Overall though, this ended up being a fairly competent tribute to sounds that I enjoy — particularly early Faith No More, Killing Joke and other “bass-driven songs with simple guitars and some keyboards” bands that thrived in the early 80s “post-punk” scene.

Glide, Dig? (2021)

A collection of novelty songs recorded from 2008-2021. Most of this was either recorded before I started learning about stuff like chord progressions and how to actually play an instrument, or during that process when I was still very unsure of what I was doing. Nevertheless, there's some stuff in here I'm pretty happy with.

Why is that Trash Can on the Table?! (2007)

Comprised mostly of Garageband loops and samples, this was my first attempt to make music. Most of these tracks are pretty embarrassing to me now, not to mention nearly indecipherable lyrically — at the time, it made total sense for me to write a bunch of songs about inside jokes on a comic book message board. But it did make some people on that message board laugh (particularly The Ballad of Winston), which was really all I was after at that point.

Cover art by Pat Loika.