Clara and I made a song for the holidays! It's called "Let's Have a Battle."

Let's Have a Battle

Just a little ambient frippery for a post-snowstorm day.

Snow Day

Another instrumental quickie. Probably will become part of a series of linked motifs that thread through a new record with actual songs.

Ambiguities

Older track from late 2014, rebuilt with a slightly new frame for summer 2015.

All the Way to Never

Sometimes things sound like Led Zeppelin. And then they sound like Pink Floyd. And maybe a little Beach Boys. With a smidge of DC post-rock. What can you do?

Led Vellocet

Here's a "dub" version of an older track that had vocals that I didn't like. I was mad at certain responses Charleston incident, so I also changed the title.

Confederate Scum

I made this Cheap Trick cover in a few hours some five years ago. Just found it on my sessions drive. 

Surrender (Cheap Trick Cover)

Found this M. Ward cover I made when I was sad and drunk. Probably 2011. There's also a fleshed-out version with drums and strings and the like.

Poison Cup (M. Ward Cover)

Found this in the files. Probably recorded in 2011. The guitar solo played without a pick, which I should do more often.

Over And Over (Fleetwood Mac Cover)

More than half a decade ago, I came up with a ridiculous music project that got as far as two demos. I was playing online Scrabble with a friend, and he just kept trouncing me. “I play to lose, I said,” instantly a killer outlaw country title. Months later, I was in Austin, Texas in my SXSW hotel room, texting with another friend who was ribbing the festival for it’s Americana-come-lately lineups. “Next up, Haggard Allman,” my friend quipped.

I put the two together in a wholly invented character with an entire 40-year backstory, song titles and collaborators. I wanted to go the full Spinal Tap and do fake interviews and mock-up album covers for records that didn’t exist. What would exist, musically speaking, was a “best of” record spanning the entirety of the hard-luck singer-songwriter’s career. It would be called No Relation: The Best Of Haggard Allman.

Well, the other day, I was taping an episode of a podcast about the commoditization of country music, and I remembered that I’d recorded two Haggard Allman songs around 2009 or so. I checked them out, and, while the compositions and lyrics were pretty great, the recordings themselves were too demo-like to do anything with. Fast forward to this morning, when I re-recorded “I Play to Lose,” (well, mostly re-recorded; there are some original 2009 session elements here and there).

Lyrics:

I play to lose
Cartoons and whiskey
I can’t refuse
The medicine that you give me
I am not one to choose
Between the silence and the
Constant abuse
I just wish that you’d kiss me
Once more

I play to lose
Cards are on the table
In a empty hotel room
I’ve never quite been able
To find a point of view
To keep me stable
Or ward away the gloom
I guess I’m just a phantom
Like you

Babe, I been taking
Everything you see
Babe, I been living
In a fantasy
Babe, I been aching
For eternity
And you reach out your hand
And you keep making plans
And I don’t understand
Why you’re with me, cuz

I play to lose
Shaving cream droplets
Form bloody pools
My mind’s in the gutter
My heart is still a fool
What, did I stutter?
You’re just like a tattoo
With needles driving holes
Into my brain

I play to lose
Cartoons and whiskey
I can’t refuse
I wish that you’d forgive me
Or buy me some new shoes
Cuz I’d walk clear to China
To get away from you
Or maybe just the liquor store
Again

Haggard Allman - "I Play To Lose"

The Contrarian is the alter ego of Washington, DC-based musician/producer/writer Casey Rae.

This page is for demos, covers, unfinished ideas, and mixes-in-progress. 

For the whole sweet real deal, head to:
www.thecontrarianmusic.com
www.luxeternarecords.org

The debut release from The Contrarian was 2001's harrowing "Cult of the Dead Rockstar." It is now an out-of-print collector's item. 

"The Contrarian" arrived in 2003. Ambient glitch with a dream-pop bow. 

"Soft Rock," from 2005, combined toothsome pop and musique concrète. 

2007's "Northern Lights" was a nod to flamboyant '70s pomp-rock. 

2009 brought "Eldritch Musicks," a song-cycle inspired by early 20th-century weird fiction scribes such as HP Lovecraft and Arthur Machen. 

2010 saw the release of "Farewell Plutonia," an epic rock cycle about all manner of daring escape.

The EP "Margins" was released in 2011, followed shortly by the technicolor heaviness of "Arjuna" the same year. 

Most recently, The Contrarian took a deep-dive into "occult-rock" with Advanced Magick for Beginners, which fuses the psychedelic witchery of early Fairport Convention with thrumming guitar menace.

In 2015, the Domina Abundia EP took a death-pop detour to frozen space in the name of science. At least that's what the mission brief said.

The Contrarian refrains from live performance, preferring the hermetic confines of his Sounds of the Baskervilles studio to the many stages he's graced.

The Contrarian

Popular tracks