Finishing up “Bicycle For Two”.  Mason added some vocal harmonies on the chorus and multitracked a glockenspiel part.  Mason took off and then Ben played a bass part down for “How To navigate A Space Ship Through a Black Hole” which is a new song that is also our current set opener, one of the band’s favorites.  We had recorded the drum tracks along with “Bicycle For Two” a month ago.  We found it pretty weird because I hadn’t bothered adding an scratch guitar parts, and Ben was unused to playing along to solely the drum track on the song, as opposed to a full live-band.  Especially, when because of what he’s playing on the song, the bassline is more felt than heard. 

After a few takes he nails it, and he leaves and I record some rhythm guitar parts for the song.  Lost of takes of cleaned-tone guitar—why can’t I get those arpeggios right?!  I should know this song by now!  Then some layers of fuzzed guitars for the ending section. 

One new song done, one new song half done.  Not bad. 

Another session devoted to tracking Bicycle For Two…  Ben feels much better today and lays down a sweet bassline on his fretless he’s been playing since the beginning of the year.  One take!?  HOLY COW.  Jeannette from Awkward Bodies (whom Mason and I play in too) lays down a clarinet part.  After a few takes, we agree that we’re not capturing the correct vibe of the song, and agree to try again in a few weeks. Also the vent was bleeding in the metal band next door at our rehearsal space, thus making any clarinet tracks we recorded have this muffled DDUUUMMMPH DDUUUMMPH DDUUMMPPHH in the background, something not really desired for a clean sounding clarinet… 

I get home and that night try some vocals for the song.  Up until this point it was a great instrumental track, as since the bass was one of the last elements to add and I absolutely need the bass frequencies as a guide to sing to for some reason.   Made a nice double tracked vocal, that sounded clear, but not as tight as it could have been.  So I redid two more to replace them, and noticed some pitch problems (more so than usual anyways).  By then I was vocally shot and now it appears this will have to be a ‘Oh! Darlin” song, where McCartney had to try doing a vocal attempt every day until he got it right, erasing the previous day’s vocal attempt.  This one is pretty out of my range thought; why did I make it in C?  I never write in C!  I somehow got a good live take I recorded as J. Noel MacIntosh for the Hoursong compilation last year, why can’t I get it now?  Listening back to live tapes of us playing it recently, my vocals were also shaky.  Practice practice practice… 

Second session for recording “Bicycle For Two”.  Wanted to do some 4-track bouncing and recording, but the fluttery problem is not solved yet.  But then it occurs to me that that we should utilize this bizarre fluttery sound before it is fixed.  We’ll have to do it next week. 

The original idea for the song, is that it would decidedly NOT sound like a typical Curiously Strong Peppermints track…  I was thinking something more like a rock band’s take on the classic vaudeville sound, my point of reference being some of the deeper album cuts on A Night AT The Opera, such as “Seaside Rendezvous”, “Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon” or “Good Company”, that sort of thing.  I don’t think we ever hit that point, even though mason had been playing the melodica on the song, and frankly I never thought it sounded like anything but a less-lyrically interesting rehash of Bike Ladder Pills, which is probably a pretty extreme condemnation—I don’t think anyone’s said that before, other than what rings in my own mind. 

But this Italian compilation specifically mentioned this was a psychedelic rock issue…  would a convincing vaudeville-rock song fit on a modern-psyche comp?  No, probably not.  Mason then referenced me some late British psyche, such as this weird David Bowie song—a direction we could take our song.  And he was right!  But the funny thing, is we would just do to “Bicycle For Two” what we would have done to any of our songs!  “Oh, so we just, instead, make it sound like us?”  Lesson learned: don’t be someone else, be yourself. 

Thus this creatively freed us up to do whatever we want with the song, rather than try to go in this specific direction that Queen already did 30 years later.  Ben was sick so we’d have to track bass next week…  With a drum track recorded last week and some acoustic guitars I added myself earlier this week as a guide, first off Sean overdubs some great washboard percussion to simulate a bicycle wheel; Mason then adds three tracks of melodica; Sean adds a tambourine in the chorus; I add my heavily flanged lead guitar intro, and spread the riff throughout the song for some variation; Mason adds an otamotone throughout, which does not work; Mason then adds a fuzzed out organ in the chorus.  After two hours we have nearly a complete track, minus bass and vocals.  Let’s see if we can finish this next week! 

We were asked to be on this compilation for an Italian magazine, but they want a completely new recording, unique for this compilation.  So we took this as an opportunity to record some new material.  After our successful KVSC show (see entry below) we thought we’d take a break from continuous rehearsal to record a song for them, and possibly some songs for our next album. I was waiting to start recording the next album until this summer when I build a new studio in my new basement, but why not get a head-start?

First up was “Bicycle For Two” which we’ve played live a few times recently.  I wrote and demo’d this song in literally 1 hour, as a part of a compilation called Hoursongs, under the moniker J. Noel MacIntosh; that demo can still be found on the net if you are interested.  The next album, as I explained in the KVSC interview, is essentially already written.  There were 14 or so songs written at the same time as Echoes From The Ultraviolet Fuzz that did not fit the concept, but seemed to have their own unifying themes.  So I believe that to be Album #3.  But when the band heard “Bicycle For Two” late last year they were quite excited, and demanded we play it immediately.  My concern is that it did not fit these songs for Album #3 (which in turn did not fit the songs for Album #2…) so the question was ‘What to do with Bicycle For Two?’  Luckily for us the opportunity knocks with this compilation!  So we’re going to spend the month finishing this one off, and that’ll probably be the one. 

After quickly knocking off the song, Sean and I decide it would be best to record some more drum tracks, since we’re all set up.  We knock off a few takes of “How To Navigate A Space Ship Through A Black Hole”, which is our current set-opener and my current favorite of the new songs.  An acoustic version of it was featured on the Death By Singularity 7” which was a bonus in the delux edition of Echoes From The Ultraviolet Fuzz, limited edition of 20 copies.  But this is the epic full-band version, and I’m amazed how well it sounds already.  It’s always a fun challenge to figure out how to best record a new drummer; I experimented recording Sean when we did the Smashing Pumpkins and Beach Boys covers earlier this year, so I had a vague knowledge of how to mic him.  We borrowed Emily from Eric Funn & The Funnette’s snare (she also played with us back in 2010!) and tried several random mics for his kick.  I was able to get this great kick sound from a not-so-great mic on Bradley, but his foot is different than Sean’s, and the trick doesn’t work.  But we have this random dynamic mic, and it delivers a bang I hadn’t got in a while and even captured this weird reverberation from the snare that seems to travel through the kit. Not as audible on the drumtracks, but in isolation, it sounds crazy! 

After two takes of that, we move on to “Boy With Wings” which we initially (and crappily in my opinion) debuted live at an acoustic show last year.  We revamped it and played it on Monday, and Sean was comfortable enough with it to record today.  I cant decide if this fuzzy, in-your-face drumsound is right for the song, but we’ll see when we start piling on the overdubs.  I noted upon playback that something was wrong with the sound…  Either this was a defective tape, or there is something wrong with my 4-track, as there is a slight wobble—or flange actually—running through the whole recording.  It sounds really great actually, gives the drums a unique flittery wobble through the already overdriven overhead mics…  An all-natural wobble, an effect of either a bad tape or my 4-track starting to break!  That’s what’s wonderful about how we record: it leaves so much to go wrong and create happy accidents.  I really want to keep this take, and see what happens with it, there’s some magic in it that will never be replicated.  And that’s what we’re all about, really. 

And then I had better get a new 4-track, huh?

Monday, April 9th at 10pm

Listen live: http://www.kvsc.org/mnl_schedule.php

Watch live: http://www.utvs.com/21/live.asp

Hey folks!  Excited to announce that our latest album “Echoes From The Ultraviolet Fuzz” can be heard and/or bought on Spotify, if that’s your poison. 

Sean was MIA today so we took the time to work on three completely new songs, which, if we can possibly get our shit together in 1 month, we can play them at the Big Vs gig on March 30th or the KVSC show on April 9th.

Starting out, we ran through a song that was written about the same time as Underwater Girl, called “Compliment Sandwich.”  It’s in a dusty key of Em6 and I’d always thought it sounded like something from the first Foo Fighters album, but in running through it, Ben and Mason didn’t seem too excited about it…  It sounds vaguely like any other Jesse Song.  Kinda depressing, because I do really like the song.  Suddenly, possibly out of boredom, Ben starts strumming ringing chords on his fretless bass and Mason starts arpeggiating some reverbed guitar part to it, at about half the speed we were doing…  WAIT!  Make it in Em6, and I start singing the song over it…  Suddenly it’s slow and spacey, gloomy and intriguing!  The song suddenly sounds like mid-era Pink Floyd… maybe the into to “Time” or one of the instrumental “Breathe”s later on in the album…  Another song thankfully salvaged from mediocrity. I am excited to see how this song will evolve. 

“Formaldehyde” is another song bouncing around, written around the time of “Catastrophic” and “Saying Prayers”, about panic attacks and social upheaval, something always related to the present, even though written in the November of 2008 (wow, so long ago…).  I consciously wrote it as ‘my Dylan song’—menaing the verses are a jumble of lyrical acrobatics that are more speaky than singy, but the chorus is a great hook.  And so whenever we tried it, it turned into a Highway 61 Revisited sort of thing, which bored Mason to death.  So I played it acoustic whenever I could…  I really love the song, I refused to give up on it, but somehow find a way into it that Mason would like.  One day probably a year ago, when we were still playing with Bradley and David, we randomly tried something completely new—  Bradley played a drum-loopy part, and both Mason and David started playing a drone in G…  I began playing this flanged guitar part that sounded a bit like something from “Bull in the Tether” and I began singing Formaldehyde on top and it became a more “Planet Telex” sort of thing than an early electric Dylan thing, which was the facelift my silly song needed!  After that, we never got around to working more on the song, we knew it wasn’t going to be on Ultraviolet Fuzz.  But we revisited it today, the three of us with a drum machine, recreating that day a year ago with the loopy-droney thing.  We seemed to recreate that magic, and Mason thought it now sounds like a Mellow Gold song.  That is fine with me!

The third song is called “Lilith” and is a song about feminism I wrote in the fall of 2009, Jesse Song #70 apparently.  It was based upon a dream I had at the time, about a woman named Lilith (obviously) whose legs had transformed into hideous horn-like hooves…  She was like a beached mermaid, but instead of a fishy torso, it was a tangled, twisted nest of grotesque thorns.  For some reason this image was so strong to me, I wondered what that meant…  Who was Lilith and how did her legs become this way?  I realized that Lilith had sold her body, sold her sexuality, and society itself had morphed her legs into the tangled web of sharp brush.  I honestly felt insecure about writing for the female perspective, about misogyny, and how the man forces himself to be the gatekeeper of how the woman is viewed in our society (and others, to a more extreme of course)…  As a man myself, am I allowed to write this sort of song?  I”m sure I’m part of the problem…  I felt uncomfortable singing it, but maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen… and if I hadn’t felt that way, I would be doing something wrong?  Either way, progress was made with more fretless basswork by Ben and some spacey slide guitar by Mason.  It will (hopefully) be the epic song for Album #3. 

We’ll see what happens to the songs next week with drums…