Pre-Production is Done. (Patreon)

Production begins 10/5. The band starts hitting the studio around then, and we'll continue to be in and out till December. We'll do some at Backroom as usual, and be hitting some new places as well, and I'll be recording some at home. I don't have a name for my home studio right now, but in the past based on the location it's been the Delaware Shack Vestibule and Brown Recluse Hill. Yeah if you saw those in liner notes those were just my house. I don't know what I'll call this one. Grandad Studios. New Tonopah Studios. The Asbury Park Sphere. Who knows.

A little bit about the process: Since I can't read/write sheet music, I use a pretty wide variety of methods to communicate parts to players. Up until Camp Here & There, I would use chord charts and just playing or singing parts back to people in rehearsals or in person, and then we would collaborate on what happens from there. In some cases, I would just go "I don't know, dude, just play what feels right." But with CH&T, I needed to be able to write the music all note-for-note, and the both the pandemic and living in the middle of nowhere prevented me from being able to easily meet up with people. So it was around that time I began using the method I've used since then, which is to make an ocean of demos.

I take every instrument I want to hear on the album and write the part using ProTools and my MIDI keyboard in my home studio/office, trying to emulate the sound to the best of my ability. If it's an instrument I can play and record myself (piano, ukulele, percussion, a little guitar, vocals) I use the real thing, because my goal is to create something as close to what I imagine the final product sounding like as possible with my limited resources and skills. I program drums, write or give example parts for guitars, and compose for the horn, string, and wind sections using this method, and then send each individual instrument's isolated recording alongside as much other information as possible to the players.

This process has been super fun for me, because I get a little better at recording and composing every time I do it, and I get to create the album twice in a way, with the first time being a very exploratory, experimental, and low-risk creative process that lets me learn more about the project and what I want from it as I go. This time there were even a few songs that I couldn't or wouldn't have written without this part of the process. The album actually ended up having at least three more songs than it would have, as well as interludes and bigger ideas that I couldn't have executed otherwise. That's not to mention the freedom I have with instrumentation choices! I can have things like a string quartet or a choir without needing to get together with a professional string arranger and try to communicate the parts.

This is my first time creating a project without any crowdfunding or commission behind it since my first one. It was important to me to feel like I'm not beholden to fans' expectations, especially with the adult themes in this project. It's not so terribly edgy or anything, as matter of fact it's light on the cursing and drug references compared to a lot of my stuff. It just gets a little more Death of a Ladies Man than Welcome to the Black Parade. I definitely felt a little stifled by feeling like I owed the fans something with In Case I Make It, and I think it's important to focus on what's creatively fulfilling. I know, it's not like ICIMI was an example of you-gotta-give-the-people-what-they-want, but I still cared about giving people what they expect based on all the crowdfunding stuff. By being able to fund this one through touring and merch sales I feel like I can say I made no promises, and I'll even warn you that it might turn some people off. But I also think it's my best yet. I think it's got some of the best songs I've written and as a piece of art as an album I think it's my best singular cohesive thing. I mean, I'm tooting my own horn here, but I'm mostly just trying to share how excited I am about it. I always think my latest thing is my best. You'll be the judge in the end. Dang.

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by this album, but also I think it's the natural next step for me. I think it has a lot of what's made each project of mine unique to each other, so there'll be a little something for just about all of my fans in it I believe. The folks who like the dirty irreverence in EIAL, the chaotic drama in self-ish, the progressive genre-work in The Normal Album, the chamber pop mushiness in In Case I Make It, and the story-based aspect of Slouching will I think all find at least little slivers of something in here. I could be too close to see though. This might be received as an entirely new direction for me, or might be seen as me doing the same things I've always done.

A note to the media illiterate and/or morally squeamish/vindictive: It is a concept album, and the protagonist is absolutely, entirely, categorically, one thousand percent NOT me nor even inspired by anything in my life in even the slightest. I entirely and thoroughly condemn his actions and personality and worldview and find them abhorrent and despicable and I hate him so so much and he is presented clearly as a villain with no redeeming qualities or nuance and he deserves to DIE.

A note to the grown-ups: Some of what I just said is true.

To answer a couple questions I've gotten about it:

There aren't any "unreleased" songs on here, sorry! Some of the deep-divers may recognize a scrap of a melody from a Patreon leak or something, and I've played versions of a couple of the songs live over the past year and I'm sure some of the telephone kids got those, but there's no junk from YouTube or the "archive" kids' folders of photos of my mom or anything. That stuff ain't getting studio versions. (Though I've considered making an artist profile on DSPs for some of those Youtube uploads someday since apparently some of y'all don't mind if something was both written AND recorded badly! Hah. Lemme know if you'd want that even if it's just sloppy scraps done with a couple microphones in my office, might find some time to slop it out!)

There also isn't any Misanthrapologist or AIIDYDI studio version on it. Maybe another time for those. It's all new stuff. It'll be somewhere between 15 and 18 tracks I think - depending on how the interludes in it get spaced out. There are reprises and refrains around it like you've come to expect from me, with more justification for it than usual, but I made an effort to not accidentally make any "references" to my prior releases like I have in the past. (Most of those were me just saying "fuck it, that first time didn't count" or quoting existing musical tropes from outside of my stuff.)

I wouldn't say it's "more like my old stuff" or "more like my new stuff." I don't see a clean divide into two styles the way I know some fans do. A lot of things about the way I perform and write went away long before the embarrassing overhaul of my public image on ICIMI, and a lot of them never went anywhere. How someone is as an artist in the real world and in the present changes and is more broad than albums released every few years can reflect. For some listeners, I'm a guy who makes albums, and that's who I am and what I do - to me, I'm a performer who sometimes records albums. I've been writing angsty millennial folk songs since the beginning, and I never stopped smashing my piano and shouting SAT words about behavioral health and spirituality. Like I said, I think it's got a little of everything, but I will say the album has both an acoustic song about trying to be better and a song where I say "cum" weirdly closely to "panopticon" and a bible verse drop; but also it's "cum" in the latin sense. (bonus: a very ambitious piano ballad where I confidently and knowingly mispronounce "giraffe" repeatedly). It is full of squishy stuff and has soft emotional bits but is also my absolute weirdest project yet if you ask me.

The production starting doesn't mean we're close to release yet, unfortunately, no. I'm trying to give myself as much lead time as possible to do all of the production around it as a larger project. Some of the music videos will take a while due to being a little ambitious and/or animated, and I hope to do something really fun with the tour for it. I won't share more than that, but I need time to write, learn, build, and do a whole bunch of other stuff in advance.

We are thinking summer '27. Singles would start coming a few months before then. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a single in 5-6 months. Maybe less, I don't know. No promises.

I think I've said enough about the project. I think maybe I've said too much. I think there's a good chance I'm going to stop saying things now. I definitely plan to stop saying things at all once the actual release cycle begins. Maybe I'll post some stuff from the studio on here, maybe I won't. I probably won't be talking about it on the podcast either.

I will say this: Things are going to get kind of weird between us for a while, guys. I'm going to ask you to have some faith that I know what I'm doing and that things will go back to normal eventually. I won't tell you when things have gotten weird. You'll be able to tell it's happened eventually, very much so, but at the point you notice it might have already started. Maybe it already did, who knows.

Are we spooked yet? I'm a little giddy. Like I'm going up a roller coaster. That could be the four pepsis I just used to chase down an energy drink. Or the Adderall. Maybe it's a panic attack. God I hope it's not a panic attack. What if it's a panic attack? Oh god!

Thanks for reading and for the support.

Yours Truly,Soon