OK folks, here is the final blog about this record. I promise I won’t keep talking about it. Well, I will but it won’t be the only thing I talk about. There’s a lot going on these days in ol’ Bradley Wik’s head, especially since there isn’t a lot going on anywhere else. Hell, this might not even be the only EP I record during these coronavirus times. Not announcing anything yet, but we’ll see. Not playing shows and not leaving the house is starting to wear on me. Like all of you, I’m starting to go stir crazy but if staying home is the worst this gets for me, I’ll feel pretty damn good about that. Besides, I found one of my new favorite TV shows (“What We Do in the Shadows”) and am finally catching up on another (“Killing Eve”). So, swings and roundabouts. Also, I made a delicious chicken and artichokes with cream sauce the other night, so yay for getting creative in the kitchen. Wait, what the hell am I talking about? Oh yeah, music. Read below, I’m tired…
“what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?”
we traded our bodies for stories
that we could tell our friends
every night might have been a journey
but we always knew just how it would end
what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?
there’s no need for goodbyes
we never really met
moments of truth flashed in your eyes
but we both knew better than to believe any words we said
what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?
there was no great reward
no revelations to find
so we poisoned our bodies
to forget the best years of our lives
what are we supposed to do now that we’ve wasted our youth?
Music Notes:
The longest song on this record still only has like ⅓ the amount of lyrics as a typical song of mine. This song is last on the album but was the first song written for the record. Some of the parts on this song were recorded two years ago. As this song is the final piece, it had to be grand enough to close the record but still be intimate and ruminative amongst the chaos. This noise (which can happen when you combine too much alcohol and Meniere’s disease. Meniere’s, which I have, is an inner ear disorder which can cause hearing loss, vertigo, tinnitus, nausea depending on the severity of the attack. This type of noise would come from a really bad one...), though it still contains various melodies, is a type of sound bed (if that makes sense) that I’ve long wanted to build upon. I weaved together up to 5 different melodies/harmonies at one point to create the foundation for this song. I also wanted to put myself and the simple, plaintive beauty of the song at odds with the noise. It’s why the vocal and guitar are recorded together through one mic. I did this for each song, to present myself alone, fighting against the music/chaos/noise coming from my own head and/or the outside world, which my Asperger’s wouldn’t allow me to be a part of. I’m always on the outside looking in. Recording that way makes it a little harder, but it was the only way I could get it to sound how I wanted it. I want you to feel like you are sitting across from me as I sing. You don't hear guitars and vocals separately in real life, you hear them all together. If you focus solely on the guitar/vocal in this song, at least for me, it’s almost like those old Magic Eye books where the chaos slowly disappears and the picture comes into focus. There’s beauty in the struggle. Sometimes, at least.
Anyways, a whole record like this song would be tough to swallow and would lessen the effect. A couple of the other tracks (and one of the tracks that did not make the cut for this record) had a similar sound/noise which I removed. It didn’t build the record the way the songs should, culminating with the beautiful chaos of this song. The record, as alcohol is referenced in the title, is supposed to simulate getting fucked up throughout. The first song has little accompaniment and sounds very clean and open. The second song has a bigger sound, let’s say this is after two drinks, and a driving energy. The sound is full and constant. Things are feeling good at this point. You needed a couple to really get things going. The third song, we’ll say after four or five drinks, is a bit more sparse. It still has a good rhythm but you’re starting to go down into the backside of the night. You alternate between getting quiet and yell-talking to people. The alcohol is starting to make that turn from fun to making you sad. You’re glad your friends are still out and you tell them how much they mean to you. The last song is the end of the night, however many drinks is way too many for you. It is meant to sound chaotic, ears buzzing from the alcohol and the noise (and the Meniere’s, if you’re like me), vision blurred after stumbling home. It’s quiet in your lonely apartment but it’s not quiet in your head. You’re at that sentimental, way-too-drunk part of the night and you wonder why you do this to yourself all the time. You don’t want to anymore but you know you still will. You have one more, why not at this point, and put on some music to fall asleep to. You know the words by heart but it sounds all distorted and angry. It doesn’t matter, the alcohol has taken over and your eyes get heavy. There’s a strange comfort in this moment, as the music softly fades while you slowly fade off to sleep.
Story Notes:
As I mentioned above, this song was the first one written for this record and contains all the themes I would explore throughout the other three songs. Thematically/lyrically, I wanted to build towards this one so I told smaller, vignette-like stories in some of the other songs. They all collide in these 4 minutes and 44 seconds (4 is my favorite number thanks to Brett Favre, but it actually is coincidental that this album ended with a song that was 4:44. I always close my eyes when I mark the fade outs and that’s just where it landed. That there are 4 songs on this record is also coincidental. I started with 6 and narrowed it down based on fit, function and story. The way I put together records is very intentional. Each song has to have a purpose, move the story forward and fit sonically into what I’m trying to achieve. I could talk about my reasons/theories behind putting albums together for hours but this is about this song and this parenthetical notation is already too long…). This song is meant to sort of reflect on the events of the prior three songs. Both the song and the title are the longest on the record. As in a lot of my songs, there is no conclusion to this song, it’s just an open ended, semi-rhetorical question. Life doesn’t often offer closure, and rarely offers guidance. And when I was going through the thick of what made its way into these songs, I wouldn’t have heeded any advice anyways. All I wanted was to be understood and not feel alone. I wanted to know I wasn’t alone in wasting so many of my “good” years. It’s a very specific brand of hopelessness that you feel when you're 24 years old. You’re ostensibly too young to feel hopeless and that makes it all the worse. It’s a weird cycle to get into and a very hard one to get out of, since you feel like shit all the time. “What’s the point? You’re a stupid piece of shit anyways…” is what you tell yourself every day. And, part of you feels like Rob in High Fidelity, “it’s brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.” Which is terrible advice as that just feeds back into the whole monster once again.
There’s also a lot of Asperger’s in this song. In addition to the hopelessness and apathy, there’s the distinct notion that this is all temporary and it’s best to save our emotions for another adventure. I remember having this feeling more than a couple times throughout my life. I can’t speak for the other person in the “relationship” but I would venture to guess they felt the same based on their actions. Having Asperger’s, I was never really the Tinder meet up-type. I felt more at home in comfort/routine of long term relationships so it was hard for me to pretend I cared much about these types of things. I sort of fell backwards into these sexual interactions being the (cliched) hard-partying-and-troubled-but-with-a-sensitive-side singer of a Rock N’ Roll band. Although, I seriously doubt many found my shenanigans charming once the hangover hit the next morning. Sometimes, it didn’t even take that long. I have a pretty clear memory (surprising for that time in my life) of sitting in a hot tub next to a girl who went on and on about how much she hated the awful guy who was the singer from the band they saw earlier, too drunk to realize that was me. I listened, got up, left, and thought it was funny at the time, not realizing how much of a dick I had become. I think some people are attracted to that don’t-give-a-fuck mentality (which was sometimes the Asperger’s and sometimes me just being an asshole) but, unfortunately for me, that just made me not care even more, even about myself. I don’t really regret any of it (I don’t feel like wasting energy on things I can’t change), but I definitely could have been kinder to myself, my liver and those around me during that time, that’s for sure.
You see, I’ve always sort of had that writer’s spirit and wanted to dive in headfirst to most things in life. I came to rethink that years later after realizing that was also a great way to drink away your depression for as long as possible before blowing your head off with a shotgun. There was nothing to be gained from diving into drinking, drugs and depression. But, I was young and thought it might be “cool.” I wanted the scars, and I got ‘em. Both literally and figuratively. Making this record has been kind of tough on me as I’ve had to revisit this older version of myself. I had to climb back into this fucked up brain. I had to picture myself going through these things all over again. Once the songs were done, I could use my Asperger’s to just tell myself it was another person, a different chapter, it’s not me anymore and all that, but while I was writing and recording, I had to live in that world. I had to be them once again.
While I was beginning to mix the record, I noticed an issue and was going to have to re-record one of the guitar/vocal parts (since, as I mentioned, they were recorded together). Redoing a synth part, no problem, just focus on the task at hand, hit the right notes and get it done. But, the vocals require performance. I have to feel everything (and sing/play guitar to a click track since the synths were programmed/played right, or very close to, on time, also not my favorite). Since mentally I thought I was done tracking, I almost had an anxiety attack and shut down for an entire day. I just did crossword puzzles and compulsively read about coronavirus. I didn’t want to do it. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to sing anymore. Obviously, I did it and it all turned out alright, but that’s what it was like making this record.
So, if what you’ve read about above has interested you and you’d like to purchase/donate to the cause, there are a few options:
Go to https://bradleywik.bandcamp.com/. You can stream the record for free or purchase (hint: you can also donate a little extra past the $4, if you like)
As I know these are trying times and people could use some entertainment, you can also download the record for FREE (CLICK HERE to access the google drive link with mp3’s of the record) with optional donation to: https://www.paypal.me/bradleywik
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