Every time I record a song, I both get better and feel like I’m relearning everything I used to know. With this track for instance, when I had most of the tracks laid down, the ending guitar riff felt so… weak. So I re-recorded the riff, 6-tracked it instead of quad-tracking, changed amp sim, but it still sounded weak. Turns out it was a plug-in going a little berserk. Something I normally would have caught right away, but this time it took re-recording everything to figure it out.
Similarly, it feels like writing a song both gets better and harder every time I do it. I struggled a lot lately to get anything out on guitar. I wrote bits and pieces of stuff on keyboard and occasionally on the bass, but almost nothing on guitar. I noodled and noodled, come up with a riff or a melody, but I haven’t been able to build off with anything else interesting.
But this song took off quite quickly. Part of it is that it is so simple. There are two basic parts, and I tried to find a way to keep it interesting for four minutes. Part of it was just to force myself to live with not coming up with mind-blowing part after mind-blowing part. Sometimes it’s okay to stay simple.
It reminded me a lot of something Russian Circles would have written, like this was Russian Circles Lite. Get it? The title is a dumb joke.
This was recorded with my Ibanez semi-hollowbody guitar and Sterling short scale bass. I programmed some synth and organ and wrote and programmed the drums as well. I recorded it in my basement office here in Des Moines between October and November 2022.