Enough with the nostalgia

Now that we’re all done with parading out the past, am thinking now on the future. Much in motion. Don’t leave me just yet. “The tears still fall and my heart still beats.”

The Ether Re-Released

This is the final reissue in the series of releases that sees the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around. This is the first album, The Ether from 1999. Warts and all.

The album was recorded track by track, overdubbing each instrument digitally. I had been recording music in this way on 4 and 8 track cassette systems for quite a while before this. I handled the keys and the bulkload of guitars, but was helped along by Bryan Leighty and Shawn McBride, who provided additional bass and guitar bits respectively.

I have been tempted over the years to re-cut certain parts, and indeed may one day do that, but I’m happy to own its faults. It is an ambitious album made by someone naive enough to try something outside his skillset. While I do indeed cringe at some of it, it’s worth noting that everyone starts somewhere and I had to fail a lot to get better. This record is the sound of me trying hard to push through my initial shortcomings. It doesn’t sound like anything anyone’s ever done before or since and in that way, is probably the purest thing I’ve ever made. Its most brilliant moments are still some of my favorite things I’ve done.

While I don’t like most modern remastering, I did do some minor remastering to this record, in that I completely resequenced the album digitally from the original, individual master recordings. Also, it was originally intended to be listened to in a single sitting (like Prince’s Lovesexy), but due to the limitations of the way it was released, It was broken into four chapters instead. Of course, no one would tolerate a single unbroken album anymore – least of all me – so it is broken into individual songs here for the first time. This is also the first time this record has been released in lossless format (for those of you who know what that means).

Resurrected Re-Released

Week three of the re-release series. Today, 2000’s Resurrected, is re-released in digital format via bandcamp.com. This is the third week in an ongoing series of releases that will see the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around.

Everybody Wants to Fuck E.P. Re-Released

Week three of the re-release series. Today, the 2001, Everybody Wants to Fuck EP, is re-released in digital format via bandcamp.com. This is the third week in an ongoing series of releases that will see the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around.

Among the Swarm Re-Released

Week two of the re-release series. Today, the 2001’s Among the Swarm, is re-released in digital format via bandcamp.com. This is the second in an ongoing series of releases that will see the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around.

Leonard Cohen

The very first song I ever covered as mrmoth was “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” The first public interest I ever received in this band was from Leonard Cohen fans who were seeking out the cover and despite mine being a very unusual style, they were generous and accepting. There’s something about being in the cult of Cohen that unifies people who normally wouldn’t ever find each other. I mean, he was a folk artist and this band is this one. So already it’s unusual to string those disparate elements together. But such was his voice.

There’s remarkably little I can write originally about the legacy of Leonard Cohen but I can tell you that I have a very dog-eared copy of Stranger Music and a thick anthology songbook that have been my compasses as a songwriter. I, like so many musicians, wouldn’t be who I am without him. To say he will be missed is a woefully inadequate expression of the thought.

Unto the Waste Land Re-Released

Today, the 2003 album by mrmoth, Unto the Waste Land, is re-released in digital format via bandcamp.com. This is the first in an ongoing series of releases that will see the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around. Also available today are the singles for “The End of the Road,” and “The Ether, pt 6.”

White Fragility

Bad cops who use capital punishment as their primary response to the potential of danger are weak cops and shouldn’t be institutionally protected from the consequences of their misdeeds. Further, they sully the very honorable and brave policemen and women who put their lives on the line to protect all people, regardless of guilt or innocence, in the name of justice. This song is my response to watching too many undeserved men and women die. Some people in authority would rather bend the truth over backward to justify homicide than admit this culture has a pervasive problem with racism. It’s time to come clean and affirm that black lives matter too.

This was the last song that I demoed for the Peoples Punk Band. It was around the time that Ferguson and Baltimore were exploding. We were looking for a tune that we could pour into everything that we were feeling about the situation. That said, it wasn’t a good fit for the band. In the end, Tim and I agreed it was mrmoth song and not really a PPB tune. So it got filed away and then, obviously, everything changed quite a bit. Flash forward a year, and the same problems are still with us and I was back to feeling the same frustration. Posting and tweeting what I felt about it didn’t really feel like enough. So I returned to the song as a meditation on the subject. The lyrics are the product of a couple years of thinking so hard about it.

These lyrics aren’t typical for me with mrmoth. I normally don’t do politics as subject matter with this project. That said, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t made many mrmoth tracks lately. I wasn’t interested in profiting by the song/subject matter, so anything anyone wants to pay for it will go to the national ACLU organization.

The cover art is by Areej Adel. She’s a brilliant Saudi artist and my friend.