I almost called this post This… Is… SMALL TALK but I’ve never seen that movie, or really almost any movie.

I write to you from a cozy rowhome in the shadow of the art museum in Philadelphia to tell you that our new album is now available worldwide. This is admittedly less impressive than it would have been 100 years ago. 100 years ago it was impressive that cumin was available worldwide. Look, I’m not going to research that claim. I am going to tell you that I know for a fact that women couldn’t vote 100 years ago. I think you’ll agree that we live in a better world now that our new album is out.

So how can you get it? Well, you can stream it to your right. No, too far… back a little… yeah. Where it says 1.  Small Talk. You can head over to OUR BANDCAMP to download it for absolutely FREE. It’s a better deal than even modern-day cumin.

As we have worked quite hard on it, I would implore you to consider giving us some of your (or your parents’) money. There are all sorts of cool things that can happen if you do that. Let’s look at them together. I’m gonna bold that whole section. It’s gonna look annoying:

Every $5 you spend entitles you to one more of the things.

$5 tier (pick one):
-Set of 13 of Adam’s original acoustic demos (featuring some songs not on the album) for Small Talk
-Set of 9 full band demos for Small Talk
-Set of 5 random acoustic demos from the next Sister City album

$10 tier (pick one of the $5 tier as well):
-Adam will handwrite the lyrics of a song of your choosing and also write you a letter in which he tries to make small talk.

$25 tier (includes all 3 of the $5 tier or the letter):
-Adam will record an acoustic cover of a song of your choosing. Be reasonable.

$50 tier (Includes everything from $5 tier + letter):
-Adam will write you a song about a subject of your choosing. He’s done it for people before and they were happy with it.

Again, you can do all of that at OUR BANDCAMP page.

If you share this post on any of your favorite social networks and email us at sistercityband@gmail.com, you get one thing from the $5 tier free. Okay, buh-bye.

Oh, so now you’re interested?

Here’s the deal: our new album, Small Talk, is coming out on April 9th of this year. You can get it RIGHT NOW, though. Share this on Facebook, Twitter, or any of your favorite social networks, tell us you did, and we’ll send you the album as well as a set of 13 acoustic demos from the album! You’ll be the talk of the town, strutting around with the new Sister City album up to a week early!

1. Small Talk
2. Today was My Day to Die and You Ruined It
3. Horsey!
4. Every Stone
5. Psalm 26
6. Kin
7. Room 222
8. Extreme Fever
9. Who Knows
10. Normal Sized Words
11. Adm Gives Up the Dream

It’s free, of course. You may enjoy it if you like fast acoustic guitar or thinking about things that make you feel uncomfortable. There are liner notes included with the download. Click this thing to download it: http://sistercity.bandcamp.com/album/reconciliation

Let’s get right to it:

I been singing for the past couple weeks. I been singing so much that there are really only harmonies left to record. Lord, I been singing so much that I’ve created entire gigabytes of data that simply didn’t exist two weeks ago. What have you done? I thought so. Here’s how I been singing.

1. Enter the kitties’ room.
2. Set up a Neumann TLM102 in front of a big piece of foam called a VoxGuard.
3. Plug it into a Focusrite ISA One preamp.
4. Plug that into a Focusrite Saffire 56
5. Plug that into a MacBook Pro running Pro Tools 9.
6. Entice the kitties to leave kitties’ room, then shut the door and start yelling until your voice is too tired to keep going, or you feel too guilty to keep singing.

Now this ain’t no professional studio. Sometimes a kid does a wheelie on a dirt bike by the window and that take is shot — or improved, depending on how you look at it. Dirt bike remix coming soon. The ceilings in this apartment are very high, like 100+ inches. This gives the vocals a nice natural reverb, according to one of the excuses I tell myself about the lack of soundproofing. We’ll fix it in post. (WINK FACE)

Now, one of  my main focuses on this blog has always been to demystify the record making process. I tend to sing 3 or 4 full takes of a song, then combine them into a Franken-take once I’m back in the lab. This is called comping, short for “comparing-different-vocal-takes-until-you-assemble-one-that-tricks-people-into-thinking-that-you’re-a-COMPetent-singer.” I sang everything but one word of verse 2 great? Okay, grab the word “disgust” from another take. Call it a day.

Ah, if only we could call it a day. Next is editing. Just like with drums, sometimes you gotta snip and drag. It comes down to an aesthetic decision. If I sang something a little out of time, maybe it sounds good. Maybe it should be soullessly aligned to a grid. A little bit of each, usually.

I’m gonna go do laundry right now, but over the next couple weeks I’m going to keep singing, comping, dragging, and drinking huge amounts of throat coat tea. The wheels are moving again.

Now I’m not tryna upset you
But I’ve got to break the news
See, while I do the thing I do
I ended up unable to
With all this recording and singing
I done lost my voice and the feeling
All up in my throat keeps itchin
Tellin you like it’s ignition

So baby gimme that pity
Making me feel witty
Out through my mouth in my nose
Breathing tryna sing notes
While you forget we exist

It’s the reason we’ve been quiet
My throat has all but been silent
Since maybe March of this year
I’ve been living deep in the fear
That since it hasn’t improved
I might never sing to you
But I’m in therapy to fix it
So I dunno, maybe the album will be out by the end of this year or something?

Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce
Bounce bounce bounce

Let’s recap: I lost my voice in March after recording, and it never really came back. I’m doing voice therapy and exercises to get it back, but that’s going to take a while. I told you in the style of Ignition (Remix) because that’s a great song and I just finished reading Soulacoasta: A Diary of Me. Anyway, continue living your lives, I’ll let you know when something’s up.

One year, huh? I don’t need to go into detail about the process of making Carbon Footprint. It’s painstakingly documented a few pages back on this here blog. I will say that it was unquestionably the hardest I’d ever worked on anything at that point in my life. I’ll also say that since the album came out, I’ve learned a lot of things: about engineering, about promotion, and about people. Let’s get a little bit sappy.

I’m not fooling myself that there are thousands–or even hundreds–of adoring fans reading this right now (unless you’re reading from the future and we’ve gotten famous making crunkstep or some silly thing, in which case I admire your dedication. Sorry about the real instruments). I do know that if you’re reading this, we have a connection. Carbon Footprint, thanks to the power of the internet, enabled me to connect with individual people across the country. You know who you are.

Over the course of recording our new record, I’ve been having trouble with my voice. As it turns out, the cause seems to be fairly innocuous (silent reflux? That sounds ridiculous), but it made me think. Before I knew what was going on, I constructed all sorts of worst-case scenarios where I’d never sing again. Obviously that’s not going to happen, but you know how these things are. It’s made me appreciate what I have. If I were DJ Khaled I’d talk about how it only makes me grind harder. This is what I want to do with my life, and anyone who has ever supported us in even the smallest way enables that.

So this is a present for you. We recorded this song way back in summer 2010, with the rest of Carbon Footprint. Originally “Poland, 1845” was going to be the b-side, and this song, “And Time Is Slipping Through Your Little Fingers” was going to be on the album. Good decision? You decide. Shout out to Mike for naming this song back in the day. I hope you’re good. Enjoy:

MP3 download: http://www.mediafire.com/?k58pmm39c6ij8bf
FLAC download: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmphe71q36xchz2

Another 10 weeks of The Process, another “man, it’s not the same anymore. Now he’s posting rap covers from 2005. I like everything but rap and country, so this is really upsetting.” Okay, first of all, hold your horses. The Process #25 is going to be a landmark episode. Hold out until then. Second of all, in order to get to the past, we’ve got to confront the distant past. It’s history lesson time.

Daniel and I were in a band in middle school; we broke up freshman year of high school. The songs in that band were about, oh, being molested by Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch, or a girl not going to the dance with me. Sadly, the band split as a result of a bitterly contentious debate: should we sound more like Rancid or NOFX? I’m not going to say which side of the argument I was on. Sometime in the next two years—in between playing along on bass with …And Out Come The Wolves—I got an acoustic guitar.

In my travels around the internet, I stumbled on a guy doing a medley of rap songs, emo style. I thought to myself, “Hey, I like everything including rap but except country. I should do this with full songs.” My friend and co-conspirator Scott and I figured out some songs, and I did some more on my own. Before long, I had my first EP, Missed Deadlines: six covers of songs by Usher, R. Kelly, Dr. Dre, and more. I played my first solo shows ever before I had any originals to my name. I became known around the ample suburban Montgomery County, MD scene as the emo kid who covered “Gold Digger.” Eventually I got my first “real” girlfriend, who inspired my first “real” songs. I quickly disabused myself of any obligation to play the rap covers, and I’ve been hugely successful ever since.

I’ve only realized recently how instrumental the stupid covers were to my development as a songwriter and performer. Rap, at its best (NOT 2 CHAINZ GOD I HATE HIM SO MUCH), is remarkably lyrically complex. By getting to know these songs intimately, I think that I probably absorbed a love for the sounds of words. At my lyrical best, I think, I reconcile the sounds of words with their meaning. The best emcees do that as well. Taking already existing lyrical structures and foisting them onto new music also gave me a good feel for phrasing. I don’t do a lot of holding notes, so a lot of what I do with my melodies to add interest ends up being rhythmical.

This cover dates back to sometime in 2005, probably spring. My voice sounds ridiculous. Still, you can hear me trying to figure out harmonies. You can hear that I tried to differentiate each verse by adding some new element or feel each time. “Adam?” Yeah, average Process reader? “I think it’s probably enough that you’re posting an 8 year old recording of you covering Snoop Dogg. Stop making it academic.” Okay, average Process reader. Sorry. “Don’t apologize, just stop.” Okay, sorry.

Can you believe that The Process is old enough to die for its country but not old enough to drink?! Buck fush. This week we’re going to talk about spare parts and letting go. There comes a point in the life of a song where it’s clear what’s going to happen with it. Maybe it soared through school, got accepted to an Ivy, and is going to be the lead single/fan favorite. Maybe it worked really hard in high school, but then lost interest in college. Now it’s working an IT job. Some songs are just townies.

Townies putter around for a while and then they die. Maybe you run into them when you come home every once in a while. At first you’re like, “oh yeah, I remember that kid/song, he was pretty cool,” but then you reconnect and you’re like, “oh, right. At least I can use their failures to feel good about my mitigated successes. Maybe I shouldn’t. Okay, I definitely shouldn’t, but it’s a hard life, and I work hard, dammit.” You don’t know struggle, get over yourself.

So you finally write them off, at least until you’re having trouble writing anything new. All of the sudden that one decent line from the dead-to-you song seems like it would make a great bridge. Really you’re saving it from the unceremonious fate of working at a diner for the rest of its life. I won’t say that any of my best songs are Franken-songs (we all know how the best songs get written, right? #18, bros), but it’s a useful technique.

This song was probably doomed from the start. I forced myself to write this song. Please do not force inspiration, unless you get inspiration from the self-loathing that comes with not having inspiration, which is a despicable, but ultimately pretty reliable wellspring. There was a storm that knocked the power out, so I wanted to write a song using a pen and paper–the old fashioned way. After a fair bit of wranglin’ and wrasslin’, this thing came out. I also stole a Bright Eyes line by accident. Can you find which one? You don’t win anything, but you’re here so you already knew that.

Long time processeers (like buccaneers) will of course have immediately recognized that parts of this song were used in the song “Dead Center,” which was covered way back in The Process #9. They’re better there, don’t you agree? Okay “Ain’t Foolin Nobody With The Lights Out,” you’ve had your fun. Table 4 wants more coffee. Good, uh, seeing you again.

Lyrics:

The insects buzz in stereo incessantly circling the bulb in the flashlight
I watch and listen
I accidentally think out loud about scale and dependence on privilege and how
There are certain things that aren’t really important
I figure it out and then I forget
I call it a night and cover myself up again

By the bedside under the desklight next to the pile of books that I started and left in the middle
Are a hundred blank pages
And I’ll be the first to acknowledge the luxury
And I thank both the prophets who pointed it out to me
And I’ll grow exponentially or I will diminish
And one day I’ll learn how to finally finish

And these days it’s tough to self-sabotage and feel like it did
Back when stomping out fires you’d previously lit
Was a safe and surefire way to steal back a few seconds
Now chasing that high from the first couple nights will only end up wasting even more time
And the more it repeats, the weaker the muscles, the weaker the bite
And pretending that progress is something more dangerous is a habit outdated all but eradicated
But sometimes it’s more about spite than about patience

I’d like to thank all of my triggers
And know I have learned from all the best teachers
There’s a promise I made on which I will deliver
To no longer retreat at the first sign of danger

I studied symmetry for centuries in search of a symbol
To untether my tendencies and ties to the treadmill of time
And unwind and differentiate inside from from outside
So it’s hard to dismiss or deny the disgust
That once creeped but now screams in cacophony and condescending
Cause it’s not a competition

But by all means compete
I am watching and listening
By all means keep circling

By this point it seems like we’ve talked about every kind of song but the “hit.” I’m not delusional enough to think that I’ve got hits, but I do have songs that are more popular than others. In the non-radio world, let’s define a hit as “one of the songs that dumb people in the audience yell for, even though the band is clearly going to play that song already.” John K. Samson addressed this beautifully when I saw him a couple months ago. He opened his set with “Plea From a Cat Named Virtute” and then went right into “One Great City!” Then he played what he wanted to play.

The hits endure, for better or for worse. Even if the outcome is eventually the latter, every hit song was initially extremely exciting. The energy in the room when At The Drive-In wrote “One Armed Scissor” or Sum 41 wrote “Fat Lip” was undoubtedly electric. You know when you’ve hit gold; it just feels different. I was grinning like a fool the first time I listened back to the demo of “Sunday Crossword Challenge.” Just the other night I wrote a song that could turn into something great. I grinned like a fool when I listened back to the demo. So look out for that in 2015 or something.

As a fairly obscure performer, the hits serve another purpose for people on my level. Sure, the true fans will die by the 6 minute slow burn screamy closer, but that might alienate those unfamiliar with your “thing.” Kids today (I hope) are listening to Kerplunk because they heard “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” on the radio. There is a game that you play to make people like you. A stand-up on a late night show has five minutes to get across their shtick. A songwriter may only get three and a half.

The challenge, then, is to make sure that the hit encapsulates you. It should hopefully have elements of the more difficult parts of your style, but it should present them in an accessible way. The people who bought Siren Song of the Counter Culture solely based on “Swing Life Away” were probably pretty put off by “State of the Union.” (Man, this is one reference packed entry. Sorry, but not really. It’s my blog).

If I’m trying to win over a crowd (something I’ve become pretty consistently able to do), this is one of the ones I’ll pull out. It’s short, it’s lively, it’s catchy, and it’s clever. It’s also not a typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song. I don’t like the game, but I’ll play it. On. My. Terms. Yeah, we’ll see how far that gets me. Okay, bye.

Lyrics:

Where as these cursed strings buzz louder than the bees in all creation
And far from beauty sit my eyes affixed to the cracks in the foundation
There are things I know
There are things I should know better
And for that I will repent when my neck can’t support my head
When my feet can’t support my legs

I feel that I would be remiss to not exist a little longer
For all this negativity one day I’d like to be a father
There are things I’d teach
And things I would be taught
That’s what gives me the perspective that I sometimes think I’ve lost
That I can’t believe some other people have got

You can’t hate people all the time
Trust me I’ve tried

The only way to leave is to go back the way we came
And I do believe we have lost our way
We’re a flock without a shepherd
We are stem cells in a freezer
And the grass on the other side
Is dying

The only things that we can see are the things we knew already
We’ve built over the burial ground of creativity
We’re a broken understanding of a metaphor or theory
So the people to our left and to our right
Are dying

 
Like, OMG it’s my birthday this week. I’m turning 23. Each year since I turned 20, I’ve tried to write a song within a couple weeks of my birthday that can serve as a sort of benchmark. “20” made it onto Carbon Footprint; I think “22” has a decent shot at making the next album. “21,” however, bears the unenviable onus of being a b-side.

The month of May in the year 2010 was a dark time, indeed. “21” finds itself in the company of some of the most directionless songs I’ve ever written, although “21” itself isn’t among of the worst offenders. The “take a small thing and make a big idea out of it” school of songwriting had worked well for me while writing the Reconciliation album (I have made literally no progress on recording that album since its last mention here, but I sometimes think about it fondly). I was in a creative drought and wanted desperately to recreate some of that magic.

My attempts include songs born out of having to kill a mouse, having to kill a spider, bugs being loud, and a designer donut shop opening in my hometown. Riveting stuff. I knew these weren’t good songs while I was writing them, but it really takes a lot for me to give up on a song before it’s over. When I do give up on them, they go into a folder called Abandoned->Incomplete, I think solely so that I can reread them when I want to make myself think I’m bad at doing the things I love, which happens more often than you’d hope (but probably not more than you’d expect).

That digression was all in service of the eventual reveal that “21” was sort of the little engine that could out of a litter of ugly ducklings. It alone was the turtle that made it from the beach back into the ocean without getting eaten by a seagull. We made a full band arrangement of it, and even recorded it for Small Talk. It’ll almost certainly see release one way or another, but I also said that about “And Time Is Slipping Through Your Little Fingers,” a song we recorded for Carbon Footprint.

Anything else I want to say about “21”? I know that this recording sounds pretty awful. I honestly don’t know why. Are we good?

Lyrics:

To symbolize your life
It’s best not to ask why
And should your ears stop ringing
Revel in the silence
And with a sentimental sigh
And nostalgia mostly synthesized
Accept and summon up your spine
And watch the sun rise from the other side

Don’t compare your length of hair
The taste of water
Or the quality of air
Try to limit empty stares
Settle down; don’t think about
The myriad uncertain or underwhelming
Sights and smells, touches, tastes and sounds

What a blessing to believe in and to mean
Written on the corpse of trees or carried by the words you speak

To summarize your life
It’s best not to ask why
And should your ears stop ringing
Revel in the silence
And with a sentimental sigh
And nostalgia mostly synthesized
Accept and summon up your spine
And watch the sun rise from the other side

From bullet belts and cotton thread
To cut up marker’s ink dried carpets
There is something to be said
For popular opinion
And if by science or tinnitus
Synagogue or sweet sweet silence
The revolution will be small and insignificant

As a summary I would like to present
A set of skeletons irrelevant
The gift of growing older and starting to know better
A skill set well accrued thanks to a faulty attitude

As a way of life I would like to transcend
The cynic’s smirk; the misanthrope’s intent
And substitute a stronger, altogether better mantra
A phrase both to repeat and into which I can retreat

I am in love that is enough