words

“Bliss” happened a couple years ago, in Portland Oregon. It’s one of those songs that tells the future. I mean, it told the future, but I still didn’t see the future coming; I hardly ever do. One of the pitfalls … Read more

Having heard “Flooding” every night on the last tour (I kept opening with it, inexplicably, ’cause I didn’t know it yet), Billy wanted to hear it again, but he wanted to hear it the way it was bouncing … Read more

To see or not to see? I don’t know anybody who wants to see everything all the time. A whole lot of crap out there is unsettling, so we shut our eyes and turn off lights and peer through opaque … Read more

“Quick” wore a bunch of different outfits before it settled on a look. It tried sad and lumpy, waifish and thunky, strident and pleading. And it wound up sounding like an amalgam of all of these, like someone … Read more

Sometimes, the world ends for a whole month. Then, shattered and rattled, you look up and someone you know is pointing out something cool. Something Strange and Important, like bamboo dancing around in a blizzard. It shatters and rattles you … Read more

In the studio, you build a song layer by layer: cement to mayonnaise, as it were. You start with the basic structure and develop the feel over a series of sonic events that eventually lead to, well, goo. Whether … Read more