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Corporation Pop

I am sure you are as thrilled as I am to know that my third album is on general release. It’s free on Bandcamp, YouTube and Spotify, but I guess if you wanted to pay for it then you could do so on iTunes or Google or whatever. Not that anyone does – I’m just saying the option exists, OK? Oh – and if you choose the Bandcamp version there’s a couple of bonus tracks chucked in.If you’ve never read this blog before, then there are tedious little posts about each individual track – which are more or less my thoughts about them as I finished them. I can’t imagine you’d be interested in that either, but you know. It’s a thing.

What do I feel about this album myself though? Well. I think this is the one where I’m happiest about the overall sound. I set off with my recording projects about 3 years ago and sometimes need to remind myself how much better I’ve got at that kind of thing.

Compare and contrast, if you will, two versions of this song: May 2016 and November 2018.

Hard to argue that I haven’t got better at recording, isn’t it?

I think I’ve also improved as a musician. My skills as a guitarist have never been great, but they atrophied greatly while I was purely playing rhythm as part of a band. Now that I’m noodling around a lot more at home, my playing has got much more accurate and I’m better able to play the things I hear in my head. Still no technical wizard, and my mind is still faster than my fingers, but you know – getting there. I think I’m a better bassist than guitarist now.

In terms of style and content I dunno. I can only write what I like. I’ve been pretty keen to experiment with different genres and lyrical themes since I could crawl, and I don’t think this wildly different in that regard. In fact, it’s probably less varied than either of my two previous waxings in terms of musical styles.

Lyrically? Well I dunno. My thoughts are what my thoughts are (you can read all my published lyrics here, if you’re so minded). Some of the the songs are very personal, some of them less so, and some of them really don’t have much content behind them other than the need to fill the song with something. Overall though, I’m pretty happy.

My next project is likely to be very different. I have a string of acoustic numbers which flirt with country, blues, and folk. I have a feeling that despite being simpler, they will actually be harder to record. So don’t wait up.

I guess thanks as usual to my collaborator Den, who added much more competent guitar tracks to a couple of numbers, my wife for putting up with me cluttering up various rooms in the house with leads and microphones and stuff, and to the odd person who occasionally comments or likes these things on Twitter or YouTube and thus proves to me that at least somebody is listening 😛