Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

My Favorite Trio Tracks: #2 – Granted (from Trio Season 4, #2)

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While surveying my Trios for this list of favorites tracks I decided against including the fully-mixed songs from the middle of Season 4. Though they appeared in Trio they didn’t adhere to the spirit of Trio – I built them piece by piece from a click track rather than recording them live.

Except for “Granted.”

“Granted” came to me in the middle of the night. I awoke, bolt upright, crying, and reached for a piece of paper. The next thing I remember was crossing out a line in the final verse, and the next thing after that was getting through a guitar/vocal version of the song in a single take.

What could be more quintessentially Trio than that?

After hearing the guitar/vocal I realized that a lot more had come to me than just the basic structure of the song. Without even thinking about it I added a lattice of background vocals and guitars around the original demo, replacing some of them in the coming days with more polished versions. The end result was one of my most professional-sounding tracks of all time, which wound up as the opening track of Trio Season 4, #2.

As a song “Granted” exists across opposing worlds – awake and asleep, alive and slipping away. Now you can hear it two different ways for the first time – fully polished and completely naked. At the core of each is my voice, hoarse at 3am from waking up crying, singing words straight from a legal pad pockmarked with arrows and crossouts.

I love this song so much that I’m afraid to hear it any other way.

My Favorite Trio Tracks: #3 – Wings of the Ragman (from Trio Season 3, #6)

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Cover songs are a tricky business.

Many songs – especially pop songs – are distinct because of their arrangement, or their production, and when they’re stripped down to just an acoustic guitar they are entirely unarresting. As covers those sorts of songs are only as effective as you know how to make them; you have to bring your own strong sense of interpretation and inertia to the song to keep it interesting for the listener.

Peter Mulvey‘s “Wings of the Ragman” is a different creature, maybe because of its aerobic, alternately-tuned guitar or it’s rapid, flowing melody. Or, maybe it’s something else. No matter what, my version of it from Trio Season 3, #6 is very nearly my favorite Trio recording of all time.

My Favorite Trio Tracks: #4 – Are You / Relief (from Trio Season 4, #4 / #1)

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I’m straying from the script here – being indecisive. So, you get two songs instead of one.

Originally you were meant to get “Are You” from Trio Season 4, #4. However, listening to it tonight I was compelled to alter a flubbed change – editing it out in favor of a seamless transition.

The result sounded good, but that’s not what this highlights series has been about – I haven’t done any digital work to these recordings other than restoration, and occasional touch of reverb.

The irony is that “Are You” was intentionally imperfect – it bucked the trend of huge mixing projects that had overwhelmed an aborted Trio season that had began over a year before. “Are You” truly is a folk song – perhaps my only one – and at the time I resolved to keep it folky and untouched.

The endeavor of bringing mixing to Trio began 53 weeks earlier with Trio Season 4, #1. Actually, you’ve heard an earlier recording of the song in question – “Relief” – already during this series. I recorded this particular “Relief” in a single take, but then decided to add just a touch of harmony. And then just a touch more.

Really, I don’t know much in the way of restraint when it comes to harmony.

I haven’t heard the guitar/vocal recording without the harmony for almost four years; hearing it tonight I find myself wondering why I was so convinced it needed any harmony to begin with.

Which is the purer representation of Trio – my recovery from excess (in mixing and in perfectionism), or my first step into it (sans the excess)?

Up to you, I suppose.

Intervening Warbly Quick Hits

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I skipped making a second link post this past week. I had every intent of compiling one, but then my birthday got in the way.

Looking back at the intervening week I give the impression that I’m a major rock impresario spending my idle time on my blog. In fact, despite appearances to the contrary it’s been just about the opposite – I’m more involved in the behind-the-scenes of blogging ever – reading more blogs, fixing more issues with my archives, and prepping more content, and it’s meant less work on my solo music as I spend my non-blog time focused on Arcati Crisis.

Really, it’s just that I default to talking about my music when my brain is too busy to talk about anything else.

On that note, let’s start with music links, for a change of pace.

XPN programmer at Some Velvet Blog highlights the best in Philly Indie Rock. No Polymer there, though they’re surely one of the area’s best (and, I say that having once written a really nasty song about their lead singer that I (coincidentally) featured yesterday).

Arcati Crisis is still several months off of the list. As opposed to a band cemented on the list – the A-Sides – who are now a national. I gave their album a cursory listen, and it’s more of the usual for recent trends in indie pop – ornate arrangements, middling tempos, incessantly warbling vocals.

Seriously: I know I’m a snob and not the most terrific singer, but why don’t we ever expect indie rock men to sing well? Of the however many new tracks I’ve heard this month – let’s arbitrarily call it 50, although I’m sure it’s more – I’ve only purchased one by a male singer. ONE. It’s embarrassing. At least when people refer to me as folk music I don’t hear an implicit knock at my vocals in the categorization.

(Ben of Polymer sings way better than any of the fifty, and is one of major reasons why I am always obsessed with improving my singing, which is why you should go listen to them.)

(On a similar note, Gina could sing a fucking circle around the whiny vocalist behind the otherwise catchy Limes.

Indie rockers, PLEASE LEARN HOW TO SING. kthnxbye.)

Wired‘s Listening Post blog highlights the fantastic (and friendly) Daytrotter, a Rock Island, Illinois studio podcasting all manner of free music from major indie artists. (Previously blogged here.)

To close out the music topic: Largehearted Boy has so many special journalistic features with artists and authors that I really could spend the entirety of my music topic covering them. This week his brand new Soundtracked feature has the director of the otherwise excruciable Good Luck Chuck discussing the music from the film’s soundtrack.

Here’s the most amazing, fantastic, scary-useful link of the week, from telescreen.org: Jott. What is it? A toll-free number you can call up and dictate to, which subsequently transcribes your ramble into text – punctuation and all.

Urban(e) blogger Smogr posts about a real life Atlantis – called Seuthopolis in Bulgaria. Seriously. For real. More detail at archi-blog Pruned, or, if you still think this is a hoax, at WikiPedia. The entire project will cost an estimated €50mill, which seems like a bargain to unwet a freaking underwater city.

(ps: I keep reading that as Seussopolis. Like, OMG, an underwater city filled with one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.)

MN blogger Stefani claims that absinthe has found renewed legality in the USA. This is actually a lie. one brand of absinthe has a low enough Thujone content to be legal.

Bonus points: this is my favorite classic advertising print.

Pennsylvania’s CHIP is one of my major clients, so I found Akkams Razor’s illustration of CHIP funding v. Iraq funding to be morbidly fascinating. Because a day of ambiguous freedom-promoting military services is totally the equivalent of keeping a quarter of a million kids healthy. Totally.

Via 18,000 different blogs, 20×200 peddles high quality, limited edition artist photos and prints at acquirable prices, as curated by blogger Jen Bekman.

Also, via approximately a third of the blogging community: Rotten Neighbor, a site that helps you avoid the neighbors that other internet denizens have found distasteful. You know the type: well-adjusted people without blogs.

Okay, my stamina is declining. Here’s my quick hits:

Hexiom is like reverse Minesweeper, via Fresh Arrival. And: they have a sister photo site that recently featured panoramic UK photographer Will Pearson.

Mighty Girl is interviewed by 9-yr-old blogger @ In the Air. Matt’s a great journalist for being a third of my age!

(And, I know this is not really something you can appreciate the enormity of via the internet, but M.G. blogged about a production of Sweeny Todd where the chorus doubled as the orchestra. Can you wrap your mind around that shit? Crazy.)

Highways of the Nation are changing their fonts. Via Kottke. Also via K: I love tennis, but I’ve never really understood the difference between clay, hard, and grass courts. NYT to the rescue! Check out their high informative animatics. Also, strangers cross the Brooklyn bridge.

Unclutterer tells you what to do with your old cell phone(s).

Iggy Pop’s hilarious tour rider.

20 ways to make great icons.

Chirky posts an amazing cake.

Learn the basics of foreign languages online with Mango. Via Make You Go Hmm.

Adventures in San Francisco land (fill) Albany Bulb.

Philly blogger Ninth Street Records posts a nascent blog, Laceo Art, which features submissions from imprisoned juvenile offenders.

Also from Philly, we finally have public access television, via PhillyFuture.

Animated GIF map of the NYC subway. Via Harvard Avenue.

Freakonomics NYT blog takes on the future of the music industry. Certainly not warbly indie bands, that’s for sure.

Rilo Kiley has some pretty great videos, including the new ones for “Moneymaker” (with real live porn stars!) & “Silver Lining,” and last disc’s great “Portions for Foxes.” I think I just like watching Jenny Lewis sing.

For reference, she is of the same approximate talent level as Gina ;)

Do you see what happens when I don’t blog links for an entire week? Pandemonium! Smogr has my photo of the week.

/fin

My Favorite Trio Tracks: #5 – Lost (from Trio Season 3, #6)

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Songs start with something at their center – an experience, a feeling, a great line, or a snippet of melody. Yet, once they’re fully formed they wind up attached to other contexts and meanings.

From that perspective I can understand why some songwriters personify their songs; Tori Amos, for example, refers to them as her “girls,” and ascribes assertive opinions and stubborn tempers to each one.

I don’t know that “Lost” has ever talked back to me, but it’s certainly a character. It came to me in a single blast in the middle of a Journalism class in Randell hall on May 16 of my Freshmen year, scribbled straight through on a single sheet of lined paper.

The guitar arrangement came later, but in the same lightning bolt fashion – so perfect in my head that I recorded it four times in a row before I felt like I captured some part of it on tape.

Then I promptly forgot it.

Really it was a little more complicated than that. I was writing so many songs at the time that “Lost” didn’t really stick out, and then I broke my collarbone and was forced to go on a brief hiatus from playing. And, when I had healed enough to play again I had a backlog of lyrics waiting to transform into songs.

By the time I returned to “Lost” it was months after it was originally written, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to play its chorus. The chords sounded simple on my four recordings, but I couldn’t quite get the fingerings.

It took the better part of the year for me to suss out the secrets of my guitar part, and as soon as I did I recorded a quiet-but-determined take of “Lost” – exactly the way it had been playing in my head for half a year – in Trio Season 1, #11.

I adore that recording, but it’s not quite one of my favorite tracks.

Over the years “Lost” has stuck with me through ups and downs. Playing with cellos, in different keys, segueing into “Lucky Star,” and changing from 3/4 to 4/4. Recently I feel like maybe we’ve parted ways … at least for a little while.

Somewhere in the middle of that journey was another take as quintessential as its first Trio appearance – a recording that remains one of my all-time favorites over four years after the fact. It originally appeared on January 13, 2003, in Trio Season 3, #6.