some thoughts on "To the Other Side"

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 8:21 PM

Often times when you are in midst of making something you think it ‘means’ one thing, but in hindsight discover it may have other implications. When we were writing the songs that would become this EP I was absolutely obsessed with memory — how we remember, how objects and places get charged with history, how tenuous and fluid our recollections can be, and what happens when we forget. And how forgetting is the true end of a thing. Every singular moment transitions from possible future to happening now to memory to forgotten. The span of infinity to void sashays past in a breath. I was struck like a teenaged stoner by how impossible and strange it is that every immediacy passes through that veil between this side and the other side. I hope these songs capture at least a bit of that ghost-making.

Something else happened while making this record. We’ve had these songs in the can for almost two years. Two years spent stuffing mailers and sending songs off to labels, and then waiting until three of about one hundred, actually responded with a ‘no thank you’. I continue to adore all of the small independent labels that have struggled to champion strange beautiful musics and would love to work with them some day. But it is clear that the subcultural economic infrastructure I celebrated and engaged in in my teens and early twenties is gone. Or at least changed. I miss it. And in my secret heart I still dream of running a little label, of touring with Red Red Meat or Sebadoh or Okkervil River, of being the freakout guest band on 90210. But in the meantime, I just want to make songs, and I want people to hear them. Point is, the other side, for this band, means it is time to put our music into the world, in whatever interesting or janky ways we can. We hope that you like some of it.

Joshua

notes & scratches

photograph courtesy of carlsweets, site by Joshua Dumas, powered by Mike Piontek's Junecode.