Paper Truth - Severs - a decade ago
I may have written this stuff up before but I stay self-involved for lack of others' involvement.
Paper Truth - Severs - album was 24th of December 2014
Today is a day we describe the same way, except with exactly 10 more years. This is why we indulge me about it.
I still had music ambition & it surfaced a bit throughout 2013 & 2014, in a difficult, song-by-song way. I roughly know what order, it's not tracklist order, but it's not important. I think some of these I still squeezed out of the old console, but most out of its replacement, with its nasty noise floors, mic distortion and inferior effects, better drums but not on-board (it made me edit on an external computer, bought separately, instead of its own screen. what an upgrade).
Through this time I was very defeated, dejected, actively suicidal, more so than prior experiences. I've not really got better; I'm just more used to it; I've become this absentine. I knew it would be the last I was capable of; I kinda object to the grandiloquence of suicide notes but I can't justify that while writing this.
I've encountered a lot of abandonment, & this is from an encounter around then, someone I'd been emphatically singularly close with, whose manner changed abruptly, unable to express their obstacle. I sensed with certainty a departure would be our Last & I said something about how much I value them, I kissed them (cancelled?) & tried not to cry, & this song soundtracked the following walk/train/bus/walk/shiver/
. The drums sound a bit cheap now but I love it; the guitars and fake strings rule. A bravely long Track 1, that choppy march ending, nearly-ambitious format, instrumental where I was trying to be The Red Paintings, background screamvox, yes. I still think I assessed the the social situation correctly; with or without the song, they would and must leave me.
. The drums sound a bit cheap now but I love it; the guitars and fake strings rule. A bravely long Track 1, that choppy march ending, nearly-ambitious format, instrumental where I was trying to be The Red Paintings, background screamvox, yes. I still think I assessed the the social situation correctly; with or without the song, they would and must leave me.The oldest track, you can tell from me exploring the new console while trying to make the microphone work at all. I initially called this a one-off track, then something single and special, but I think it doesn't quite work on the album, and it could have demoted to 'What Remains' from how scrappy it is. But then the riffs.
"Turnstiles" is a speck of nonsense for the rhyme; could've said something about 'erstwhile'. Think I meant 'voting, council, government' reduced to an inanimate obstacle. Got the character of Why Relent. reclaim femininity, rock with it. dismantle categories too. I might've aged out of referring to 'girls' by now.
I do like to claim cliché phrases a bit. It's best to subvert them, but those that are good I can just make the anthem for. Gods are pap, but I was criticising my own worship 'cause I've been a believer way too much (and since then) & it's pathetic. Maybe too many times I've insisted on the simplicity of a two-note riff but there's something almost Motörhead in its drive. I think this is among the best, I stick up for bass solos, & there's just a bar near the end that could've done with some extra fill, that's all.
Treatise song, the music follows its vocals, really suits being performed but I dunno if I'd be bothered to again. I enjoy an E-bow solo because it's a way I'm capable of making a guitar sound good. Even the rubbish console's distorted vocals suit this (and prior song). I might too often have two short songs of very contrasting weights together early in a tracklist, or maybe it's cool.
A self-dare to write a song like video games (like Machinae Supremacy, whose early keyboards I imitate in the breakdown) AND like an anime theme. I think the chorus vocals imitate, is it called Lyricure Go-Go!? A parody-but-sincere song from Zetsubou Sensei. I surmised that anime music 'always' has that suspended fourth that resolves down to the major chord, & didn't manage to include that, so kinda failed on my study. But I got this song out of it, & it nails the other tropes, if not quite the vocal dexterity. Post-chorus riff is in a Manics B-side & I'm guilty. I'm not sure if writing something from someone else's fantasy world actually enriches my repertoire; it's immersive enough but not mine to use, & not real enough an experience.
Not an actual Koto. I think it's the track 'Eleanor' on 'Red Brick Heart' by Performance that made me insist on an instrumental (with a similar vibe) in its place. It's quite formulaic and plain but I wouldn't drop this at all.
My dad called this one filler... yeah maybe. Maybe it's the "the chorus sounds like the verse"ness, & both thereby sound too much like the then-new For The Strangers by Suede, but the small few pre-chorus bars ("remember me...") feel so definitive, that once we're gone there's just the mark we made, and I think how that makes for the bass ending is gorgeous, justifies the song. I like how pathetic and redundant the 'violin' mewling is too; it's how it feels to have lived that long. Maybe I improved this track when I did it on YouTube. This one's a rare case of "I wrote a chorus then replaced it", but maybe the replacement was too plain. As I write this I can't recall the first chorus but nothing amazing. The spoken word maybe gets away with it.
I liked to think I wrote political songs but I barely have even personal listeners so it's pointless. Zooming out to overview patterns works for the duration of this song, and this riff. If we pretend I didn't steal it from Suede again (in their live cover of Pet Shop Boys' Rent). Then I found the arpeggio in Weezer's 'Slob', which I didn't yet know, but whatever, it's hard-hitting. I was trying out "what if the chorus/hook is just because I say the thing a few times", which can work for one song and this might be it. Might be my first recorded 'Ikuzo', that cringe hook I use as a 'sickow!'/'let's go!' thing as if I can get through a sentence in Japanese. I'm keen for it to be understood I'm referring to "la la la, I can't hear you", rather than directly invoking a "la la la" AND those awful "I can't hear you" things performers do, but it might not come through.
Bleak AF. Describing relationship toxicity, violence, codependency, mutual suffering but not necessarily mutual inflicting. Something I've witnessed, not much experienced but I WILL never stand up by/for myself and I am at least a simple martyr. I found guitar easier to record than piano at the time (see 'Is This Microphone On?' for my nasty first attempt at a full piano-ballad), but piano better expresses what I'm good at, & I'd basically done all my guitar tricks by then.
I like the harsh bleakness of it, how the title is out-of-context & misleading, the low-breathing vox, the hopeless climax, & I'm not quite yet embarrassed by the bit that seems to shame sex & make you need a shower. However, I later learned that I'd subconsciously basically lifted the piano part from Greg Graffin (American Lesion)'s version of 'Cease', something I'd then not heard in years, & this embarrasses me a bit. So maybe this is one I should've cut for a better piano nightsong:
This track is NOT on the album. It should have been. I think I felt it's too robotic, uses up more time, & too instrumentally simple, too resigned-sounding, but none of those stop it from being good. If I didn't swap out 'Harder', maybe just somewhere else on this second side that's not next to it. Finishing on an 11-track album was a bit weak but I ended up certain at the time. The patchwork structure shows the kind of creativity we reserve for B-sides then regret that we did, & insomnia did need a superhero anthem. Near-steal of Machinae Supremacy lyric "The fire, it knows me". I love that octave-bassnote thing. See Absentine's 'Eye of the Darkness' for a wilder insomniac supervillian anthem. There's a night every night.
What Remains 3 is otherwise such a negligible, scraped collection that it's maybe only relevant because of this, or it makes this irrelevant.
I just wanted to say "Let's Go!" three times. I came up with this after a few months failing to construct any songs, & it's meant to be the last protest song possible, just how protest is a spirit you can't kill but it's fucking jaded. It knows we're doomed & it's at least having a go. I enjoy committing to such a rhythmic verse vocal, and it's an actually-quite-good-riff made by me, but maybe 'Symptoms' said this. I enjoy making hooks out of things like 'I wanna die', because I think it's widely-held sentiment that people don't express much, always buzzing around my head so I may as well make it hummable over and over again. Do I finally complete my transformation into Iggy Pop in that last line?
I struggle to describe chronic illness because it's just "pain, but worse", & because being undiagnosed means being undescribable. To my instinct this is an R.E.M. song somehow, I become Pet Shop Boys in the talky part, bass break is M People, & the verse has a bit of 'Paparazzi' in it? I regret pronouncing 'desolate' with a 'z'. This was intended as conclusive and it's so annoying that I'm alive. "It ends with a whimper: bang" would be a line to go out on. But maybe I knew, because a voice seems to answer that.
Law of getting older but I think this youngest Paper Truth work is the one I can stand by the most. I wasn't good at cover visuals & I mentioned the album name to a friend & they said something about scissors and I remembered some joke I'd made about "Paper Truth, rock music, scissors", & a discarded/demo song idea called 'Scissors', so it had to be. Just some hair scissors on the leathery pad of my desk but there's something about the shape simplicity that makes it actually cool.
I've lost dexterity in the decade since, in ways I probably won't recover, meaning this one might be my last good guitar album. You see rock musicians age and play guitar less and it's usually in favour of more boring music, because they're not interested in getting more out of guitars. Maybe I would be if I could, but I'm following my physical ability. Putting this one reminds me to put the detail in, put the concentration in, and reap the reward of nice output. See if I get there, over a decade after wanting to be dead in this particular instance.
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