Aug 21

Choices of the Grasshopper October 2021

October 2021

KYFR 2021 - MIX 20

A Beginner's Mind

(This Is) The Thing

Before We Knew

California Palms

Prologue

stream here: https://stem.ffm.to/somedayyogs

written by MASN & Tiffany Day

produced by YOG$ & Public Library Commute

Someday (with MASN & Tiffany Day)

The songs on Things That I Confuse pretty much wrote themselves in a frenzy. Still, they sound more Spunsugar than ever. It's still as timeless and nostalgic as it is fresh. The four songs consist of two more poplike tracks and two that have kept the more noisy aggressive sound that has become a staple of the band. Now there's an added layer of an icy lo-fi feel. References to giallo films and Japanese movie monsters work to tell stories of close relationships, trauma and regret that keeps one up at night. Every second is though trough, there's no unnecessary fluff. Every note serves a purpose on this EP.

Spunsugar - Things That I Confuse

Spunsugar - Pink and Red

Sheesh!

Airborne Panic Attack

Artifacts

Fisher Island Sound

Lyrics:

Said you were going for some air
Said you were going for some air
You said you’d be right back
What were you trying to smoke a nine mile long cigarette?
I couldn’t sleep, I swore that you’d come home
Starting to think that the last time that I saw you
I was really talking to a ghost	          
Lint of a masterpiece in your black eyes there’s a fleck of white

Feels like I’m breathing too much air
It’s a poor mans high
If you weren’t so busy dying for a living
If you weren’t so busy trying to scare me away
You could’ve really been something great
Lint of a masterpiece in your black eyes there’s a fleck of light

Feels like I’m headed for clouds that won’t catch my fall
Oh the world won’t stop when you start to unravel
Used to sit on the water’s opposite side
Staring, imagining what it’d be like          			
Where we’re speeding, slapping the road, blue smoke pours out from your ride
Lint of a masterpiece in your black eyes there’s a fleck of white

I gotta get out of here
I  gotta get out of here!

Lint of a Masterpiece

Reflections on a Grey Dawn (feat. Dustin O'Halloran)

Feel Good

Sometimes Earth is hard. “Rocket To The Moon” is a spacey fantasy about escaping gravity for a more harmonious existence on the moon.

Written and Produced by Phil Danyew
Drums by: Dan Bailey
Mixed by: Carlos de la Garza
Mastered by: Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters

Rocket To The Moon (lyrics)

Rolling down the window
I can hear the echo
If I’m sleeping in the planetarium  
I don’t mind

Surfing on a rainbow
Hitchhike through the cosmos 
If I’m eating breakfast on a satellite
I’m alright

They think I’m a dreaming fool
I don’t really see it though
Or maybe I don’t wanna face it… and
Admit that I’d rather be
In alternate reality
Escaping the gravity maybe
On a rocket to the moon
Rocket to the moon

Psychedelic aliens
Cosmic color best friends
They want to crown you ruler of the universe 
And beyond

They think I’m a dreaming fool
I don’t really see it though
Or maybe I don’t wanna face it… and
Admit that I’d rather be
In alternate reality
Escaping the gravity maybe
On a rocket to the moon
Rocket to the moon

They think I’m a dreaming fool
I don’t really see it though
Or maybe I don’t wanna face it… and
Admit that I’d rather be
In alternate reality
Escaping the gravity maybe
On a rocket to the moon
Rocket to the moon

Why would I wanna stay awake
I could be traveling in space
I still got an empty seat baby
On my rocket to the moon

Rocket To The Moon

A House in Provence

Spit Of You

Closure

I Don't Want to Talk

<3 <3 <3

fall in love
there's a part of me that only you can see into
just enough
to show me there's an open door
there's something more

this won't ever last
but the feeling in my bones makes me forget it all
this heart is made of glass but it's hard to care it all
cause we're falling apart

fall in love
there's a part of me that only you can see into
just enough
to show me there's an open door
there's something more

all that I believe
is the light you showed to me
but you took it away
gotta make you see
so i'll find a way to say
that I want you to stay

fall in love
there's a part of me that only you can see into
just enough
to show me there's an open door
there's something more
for me and you to see (cause we're falling apart)

Glass_demo

Taking its name from novelist Jack London’s 1904 seafaring adventure, Sea Wolf has evolved organically from its hermetic origins in Alex Brown Church’s living room into a muscular, full-bodied musical entity with passion to burn. After adopting the sobriquet, Church burst onto the music scene in two-fisted fashion with the EP, Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low, and the subsequent full-length debut album, Leaves in the River, about which Interview magazine observed, “His music is both erudite and unvarnished, a blend of swirling melodies, literary balladry and damaged art-rock composition.”

And now, Church’s singular vision has led to the creation of the eloquent and expansive new album White Water, White Bloom, which not only fulfills the immense promise of the initial musical diptych but conjures up its own cosmology. This is one of those rare and mysterious records wherein, the first time you hear it, you can’t shake the feeling that it’s always been part of the soundtrack of your life. You intimately know its ups and downs, its melodies and cadences, its settings and characters.

“I couldn’t have known beforehand what the next record would sound like,” says Church, “but I did know I wanted it to be bigger, with a band feel, rather than another series of intimate confessionals.”

A song cycle set against the changing of seasons, this timeless work unfolds like an epic poem, yet resonates with thematic elements that speak, elliptically yet unmistakably, to the world we live in. Pulsing with evocations of nature at its most elemental, Church’s songs are flooded with vivid imagery, carried along on torrents of sounds as majestic as a mountain stream swollen with the bracing, crystalline runoff of spring’s first warming breath. What’s more, he sings these songs with newfound power, the result of extensive roadwork behind Leaves in the River, while deepening the mesmerizing expressiveness with which he made his initial mark.

Opening track “Wicked Blood” begins with what sounds like an orchestra tuning up before surging to glorious life, the rhythm section shaping itself into a propulsive groove accented by delicate piano notes, carrying along the opening chapter of the saga: “We met in the East/ poured in like a flood,” Church begins, shadowed by the breathless wheeze of an air organ, “You’re the whispering kind/dark sapphire blood/A vision of veils/all shimmery white/like a backdrop of sails/all aglow from the light/of the wonder behind/at a starry night.” And with that, we’re off into an adventure of cinematic immediacy, as befits the sensibility of this onetime film student, who’s clearly found his natural medium of expression.

“Lyrically,” says Church, “I like to incorporate what one would construe as classic imagery, and even infuse the songs with elements of mythology, but also delve into more contemporary themes. I’m interested in the way words look and feel, not just when you hear them but also when you read them.”

Church’s verbal acuity is mated with bold, vibrant soundscapes set off with thundering drums, stabbing, reverb-soaked electric guitars and ghostly keyboards, resulting in such memorable pieces as the mythological tale “Orion & Dog,” ornamented with strings right out of a John Ford western; the folk-noir fable “O Maria!”; the surging title song, burning with Byronic heat; the fever-dreamscape “Spirit”; the muted, idyllic, “The Orchard”; the Dylanesque roundelay “The Traitor”; and the closing “Winter’s Heir,” with its life-embracing denouement.

“When I write a song,” says Church, “for me it’s always associated with a specific place and time. For example, ‘Orion & Dog’ was written during the summer, and ‘Winter’s Heir’ is about coming out of the long Montreal winter and experiencing a sense of rebirth.”

The album has a back story: “I met and fell in love with a girl in Montreal while on tour with Irving, and just before signing with Dangerbird,” Church recalls. “And then, while touring behind the Sea Wolf record, I spent most of my time off in Montreal with her. Apart from ‘Wicked Blood’ and ‘O Maria!,’ which I wrote in Los Angles, everything on White Water was written in Montreal, holed up in our little apartment, a block away from the river. That was all of last fall, winter and spring, so I was very much influenced by that experience, and a lot of the record is set there in my immediate surroundings, along with remembrances of being home on the West Coast.”

White Water, White Bloom was recorded at the Omaha studio of Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, M. Ward, Monsters of Folk), with Church handling vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, as well as some of the air organ and pump organ sounds that were such a big part of the sonic signature of the earlier records. Joining him were the three core members of the six-piece Sea Wolf touring lineup: keyboardist Lisa Fendelander, bassist Ted Liscinski and drummer Joey Ficken. The remaining slots were filled by Mogis on lead guitar and an assortment of other instruments, with his Bright Eyes cohort Nate Walcott filling the role of the cellist, arranging strings for a quartet, sometimes working from cello parts originally created by Catherine Odell, who’d been part of the initial Sea Wolf touring lineup, with Church’s input.

They arrived with a full set of song demos, providing a detailed blueprint for their subsequent expansion into widescreen anthems that reshape the classic aspects of traditional folk, folk rock and chamber pop—but these bucolic elements are intercut with aggressive bursts of raw emotion sharpened to a serrated edge—making for a rich, vibrant sound that is virtually unprecedented.

Church is working in the most personal of mediums, and that results in constant self-questioning. “Every time you make a record,” he says, “you invariably think, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done this differently,’ or ‘Next time I want to do this.’ But if you get to the point where you don’t think that, then it’s time to quit. In terms of aspirations, as long as I’m constantly having new ideas and finding new places to explore with the music, I’ll be satisfied.”