merry halloweenmas! so i've been thinking about my first run of EPs that i was truly Satisfied with at the time of release, those being Red, Green, and Blue, and I figure since Red turned 3 about two weeks ago a blog post where i talk about those could be cool! i tried doing this last night with plans to make it CONTENT but i wasn't really feeling it and also it was kinda 12 minutes of rambling that I didn't wanna edti so here we go, time to do this but in text form.
in 2021, i was in a band that wound up putting out an EP and not much else with my girlfriend and other assorted people that came and went. as a result, by midway through that year i actually had practice with writing songs with, like, lyrics and stuff! they weren't GOOD songs necessarily, but they were songs. this inspired me to dust off assorted plans for a solo career and maybe actually try doing it. at the time i was enamored by the music of new jersey's Leema Mountain (who also did things as Lima Research Society and Lima. with a full stop), and inspired by his album Xmasbeans' brand of synthy folk music i busted out an old, old boombox of mine around junetide and recorded a stripped down cover of his song Space Hotel 2010. and it wasn't a GOOD cover, but it was something i was proud of at the time, enough so that i wound up putting it on YouTube!
at the same time, i started experimenting in Ableton by recording songs that weren't my at-the-time brand of synthpop or wonky rock. three of those songs - Good Morning, The Stars Remind Me Of You, and Good Night - wound up being on Red. the fourth, Blue Tailed Friends, was a song that i liked at the time of recording (having repurposed an old instrumental with lyrics written about elon musk being stranded on mars), but which i very very quickly stopped liking and is most of why Red didn't release in, like, August. instead i demoed a song influenced by the aforementioned Leema's The Tallest Tree In Town and the weird early Car Seat Headrest songs i was obsessed with and slotted it on the record where Blue Tailed went. this is, i think, most of why i kind of dread relistening to Red as I released it! i really really do not like the song Take Some Time as it appears on the EP, and i have been progressively bettering it over the past 3 years in the hope that eventually i'll be satisfied enough to release it as is. (there was a version that got cut from This Is Not A Cat. actually, there was two.)
in October, i released Red and did a music video for The Stars Remind Me Of You where I danced around like a dork in my room (again, i was really into Car Seat Headrest), and then went back to doing music with my old band. i had plans for future EPs, but i wouldn't start realizing them until my band finished an EP of their own around Decembertide, when I started the Song-a-Week project.
for clarity - i think the song a week project was a good idea! i got it from JoCo who was admittedly a far more talented songwriter than I was at the time, and is still far more talented than I am right now, but i figured it would be fun. it's just that, of the songs that weren't used for something, i am either not really proud of them or on really despicable terms with them. maybe i hate my old music too much but it's just like... i can't listen to most of that stuff anymore which is why it's gone. it's kinda embarrassing. i did wind up getting a lot of the songs off Green and Blue from that process though!!! off hand there was an acoustic version of Angry Bees, a weird keyboard-heavy version of Brain Fog, an acoustic demo of False Cap'n that I recorded in the middle of my room like 5 feet away from the mic, Travelling Among The Stars... there's a lot of it. it's a weird case. i might try to do something like that again some time but i dunno if i could immediately, Peanut Tree Nut is already kinda diong that w/ Star Songs.
anyways uhhh... Green was mostly recorded in a week but I redid Bookshelf at the last second and rerecorded the vocals for I Don't Wanna Be The Moon also, which I had done for February Album Writing Month. and then genuinely Blue just kinda wound up happening - I finally got headphones (if you listen very closely to Red and Green, you'll hear the song bleeding into itself because I was using $5 decade-old Walmart speakers and was too broke for headphones) so it's a bit clearer sounding and better mixed, and a lot of the songs were already floating around by the time I put it out. Time Traveller was done during the initial sessions for Green and stuff, Lottery Of Death was done during Red at first but then I rerecorded it at midnight in Mixcraft, and the rest were a product of Song A Week except Afraid because I never actually released the demo for some reason.
a lot of the stuff from those EPs are embarrassing just because I couldn't really sing good or mix good or record good (all of it was done using a beaten up USB mic for the Rock band series), and I have better versions on This Is Not A Cat, it's just that I haven't figured out how I wanna release that album yet. it'll happen eventually... i don't think i wanna take the EPs down yet just because i know some people have a strong connection to them, but i've done good recordings of all the songs i'm super proud of minus Moon (couldn't fit it on the album) so it feels maybe a bit redundant.
music is weird like that. hope you're faring well!
The Mountain Goats - Color In Your Cheeks
Weird Al Yankovic - Frank's 2000" TV
The Dismemberment Plan - The City
The Who - Mary-Anne with the Shaky Hand
Starry Cat - You're The Reason I Believe In Ghosts