Anyhow, I have gotten a few people asking me how things are going, and I realize that we are quite a bit further along in the process than this site is currently giving credit for. With that in mind, I went through a few demos (rough vocals and all), and made a few clips just to show where we’ve come from and what we’re aiming for.

First up is Time Machine. Last I posted, it was a fun hot mess, with all sorts of loud sounds going on. Since then, we’ve added strings, a synth bass and whooshing synth pad in the background and generally cleaned things up. Here’s 30 seconds or so of that:

Next up, we have Rather Be a Fish. During the process, this song quickly rose to the coveted ‘favorite’ spot in both John’s and my estimations, so we’ve been (a little unfairly, I must admit) pretty devoted to this track. Vocals, both of the lead and background variety have been added in, as have acoustic guitars.

And finally, a track not getting nearly enough love; Mighty Fine. This is the aforementioned ’sleazy jazz’ number, and as such, it sticks out quite a bit on the album. It will be released in some form or another- I like it too much to abandon it entirely- but it may not make it to the full-length. You never know with these things, though, so I’ll never say never.

And there you have it. Three nearly-complete songs. It’s been a road, and there’s still plenty of work to be done. I’m excited to get down and dirty with these songs again, though.

First up, we have The Magic Theatre.  A collaboration between Dan Popplewell and Sophia Churney (of the UK band Ooberman), it’s an eleven-track concept album set in 1968 and 1888 featuring- among other things- a time-travel love story.  The vocals are all absolutely gorgeous, the orchestrations are breathtaking, and the storyline is just captivating.  Plus, the first single “Summer Sun” is exactly what its title suggests; sunny, upbeat pop of the kind we haven’t heard in too long.  The last four songs will break your heart in the best possible way, and you’ll finish listening to the album aching for those two lovers separated by eighty years.

Next, there’s Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me.  I’ve had an odd relationship with Ms. Newsom’s music.  I remember when her first record, The Milk-Eyed Mender, came out.  I must have been fifteen or so at the time, and it was one of the most jarring, unhappy records I had heard up to that point.  I was not prepared for her voice- at once sounding like an infant and an eighty-year-old woman- and the lo-fi production left me cold.  A few years later, I bought Ys, mostly because I felt like I should like it.  I didn’t, of course- one can’t listen to music that way- but every so often, I would dust it off and play it again, appreciating more and more of it each time.  When I heard she was coming out with a three-disc third album, I was more than a little skeptical.  After all, that’s an awful lot of music to expect a listener to sit through.  However, once I heard the track “Good Intentions Paving Co.”, I was thoroughly hooked.  She brought a ’70s folk sensibility to this record, and on songs like the aformentioned, you can almost believe that Joni Mitchell had a hand with the songs’ creations.  To simplify Ms. Newsom’s music down to possible influences is really to belittle her musical accomplishments, though.  Songs like “In California” and “Baby Birch” are gut-wrenching, and “Soft As Chalk” has a bite to it I didn’t know Joanna had in her.  To be sure, her voice is definitely not for everyone; but if you can appreciate it, her music is really something not to be missed.

And finally, we come to the album I’ve been entirely lost in.  Leave Your Sleep by Natalie Merchant is her first work in seven years, and that labor of love shows.  Twenty-six (twenty-seven if you buy it on iTunes, including the bonus track “Old Mother Hubbard”) poems set to Merchant’s music comprise two discs, and it is still not enough.  She apparently worked with over one hundred musicians on this album, and it is most evident on songs like “maggie and milly and molly and may” (words by e. e. cummings) and “The Land of Nod” (words by Robert Louis Stevenson)- songs that will actually break the listener’s heart.  Merchant’s sense of humor shines in her arrangements of “Bleezer’s Ice-Cream Store” (words by Jack Prelutsky) and “The Adventures of Isabel”; but upbeat or ballad, there is truly not a dud.  I have only had this album for a day now, and I literally have not stopped listening to it.  It’s going to be a hard album to beat for my personal Record of the Year, that’s for sure.

I feel so extraordinarily lucky to be able to listen to what can only be described as this glut of beautiful music.  It makes me very excited to hear what the rest of the year has in store, and it’s also making me think of my music in new ways.  I’ve finally started working on a new piece, tentatively titled “Snakeskin Heart” (the first time I’ve been able to hang on to a new song-idea that I’m writing for myself for a good four months or so).  I feel more creative than I have in months, and it’s in no small part due to the albums above.

I was cutting some vocals today, to varying degrees of success. It was just an off day to begin with- I woke up with my throat feeling, to excuse the cliche, like sandpaper- but it was extraordinarily frustrating to me. I had the sound I wanted in my head, but for the life of me I couldn’t get it out. I was tearing my cords apart, trying to sing a song I had fallen out of love with quickly after its creation, when John told me the wisest thing I’ve ever heard. “Don’t try so hard,” he said. Of course, I didn’t listen to him then, I just tried to power through the phlegm, in the hopes that maybe I’d scream it away. It was only later, once that song began to form itself into something I could live with, that I was able to take heed to his words. And of course, that last vocal take felt effortless.

..though when, an hour later, it came time to do vocals for Baby and Rather Be a Fish, I couldn’t quite find that magic again. I may have gotten Fish done right, but I’m still a little iffy on Baby. Luckily, I’ve got another full day of vocals coming up this weekend, and then we’ll see where we are. Hopefully by then I’ll be able to be a little more trusting. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get a few good takes.

Working on this album- finding twelve songs that I felt were good enough to be put on tape and shown to everyone, really spending time with every note, word, and part, and essentially thinking about them non-stop- has been such an eye-opening experience. I put a demo of Time Machine up on garageband.com (a site where listeners review songs based on production, songwriting, lyrics, and any other aspect you could imagine), and the comments have been so helpful- for the most part. I got, on the same day, two reviews talking about the ‘abysmal lyrics’ of the song and one ‘best lyrics’ reviewers’ award. It can be confusing at times, but on the whole, I’ve gotten a lot of excellent feedback and food for thought.

At this point, I’m just frustrated that I can’t spend all of my waking time working on this album. Unfortunately, life has gotten in the way, and rehearsals (for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, have eaten up my schedule to the point that the best I can do until I’m back home in a week is ruminate on what I want this album to be. I’ve still got some lyrics to hash out, some vocal techniques to try, so I’ll be quietly keeping myself busy until I can throw myself into recording and mixing with all that I have.

Until then, here’s a little video of me (and John Lagomarsino, the album’s producer/engineer, among others) singing On The Willows from Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell.

Last Friday, we had a relatively epic 7-hour session on campus. We started out with the harpsichord; the music department chair was gracious enough to trust me with the instrument, and what an instrument it is. It’s painted beautifully inside and out, and the sound was just incredible. It was originally going to be on two tracks, Rather Be a Fish and Better Brain, but then John had the idea of running it through a distortion effect in Logic. It then swiftly replaced every electric guitar that was planned on the album. I think it’s particularly nifty that we went 18th century to make a decidedly 20th century sound. Here’s a snippet of Time Machine, a track where the distortion really worked well.

And also for fun, here’s a snippet of Rather Be a Fish, with the un-distorted harpsi.

After that, we had three supremely talented string playing friends (or friends of friends, as the case may be) come in and lay down tracks on Better Brain and Time Machine. The day ended with a supremely satisfying flute session by a dear, dear friend of mine, and finally, a sing-along of as many of my close friends as could make it; both on the song If I. We’re heading into the home stretch now- only vocals and guitars (and possibly a banjo on one track, here’s to hoping) are left.

Six months ago, I would have never thought that things would turn out as well as they have been. I didn’t think I knew the right people to play, the right places to do this, the right equipment to have. Everything’s been coming together in a big way, and I really couldn’t be more excited.

Before we delve into the drums, gentle readers, let me first take a moment to wax poetically about the wonderful person who lent his talents to the bass on this album.  I’ve known Jeremy Bunyaner for years now- he, among other things, played in my band the first time I musically directed bare in its regional premiere, all the way back in 2007.  We’ve always sort of stayed in each other’s periphery, and I knew he’d be the right guy for the job.

On a freezing January morning, we loaded my car to bursting with various instruments and electrical equipment and made the journey to John’s basement studio.  For the most part, things went rather smoothly- until about five minutes before we were scheduled to end, of course.  Jeremy’s PA started picking up radio signals, electric currents were running up and down headphones, strange buzzing noises would stop and start without warning, and there was just general mayhem.  Perhaps it was the Universe telling us to stop, as we’d spent a good seven hours underground without seeing the light of day at that point.  Either way, the session was finished without much more heartbreak, and we got quite a few good takes out of the day.  Here is a snippet of Little Green Monster, with the added bonus of a rough-mix drum track.

Next: A Treatise on Studio Toys; or, Drumming In the 21st Century.

~Fuller