While writing last week, I was possessed to listen to Beat Noir's only album, Ecotone for the first time in forever.
Hey, since I mentioned it, I guess here you go:
I GUESS I CAN'T EMBED BANDCAMP PLAYERS ANYMORE
Like I said, it had been a minute since I had actually listened to the album in full, which I guess means I hadn't experienced the songs from a listener's perspective in a little while. The main way I interact with the songs is through playing them at shows, or more recently since we haven't played a show in two months, at practice. And we barely play them at practice because we're getting ready to record!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not as familiar with the songs as I once was. But I also think that an album is a work of art itself. Bands put a lot of effort into the track order, artwork, overarching themes, etc., so it's been forever since I had experienced Ecotone as a whole. I still know the songs we play live, "Nicky Driscoll", "Ancienne Gloire", "The Wars", inside out, but that's not the same for other songs. There was even songs I forgot were on the album! Somehow I forgot that "Sheltered Town / Bitter Sea" which, frankly, I think is our best song, is on the album. The Six Feet Under clip in between "Nicky Driscoll" and "Deathwish" completely slipped my mind, which is funny, considering that Ecotone is basically Six Feet Under: The Album! and we watched the entire show while writing it.
It's also much different listening to the 10 songs now, about two years later (I think?!) then it was hearing them all the time while making the album. There's a lot of things going through your mind while creating an album that seem like a good idea at the time. Making an album is a really hard and long process, so you end up having a million fucking ideas about what you want to do with your art to make it stand out, to make it good, to make each part of it distinctive and different. "Hey, we all like Sloan and Thrush a lot, so let's make this song an alt-punk song." "Hey, we like C.C.R., so let's put 70's rock riffs in this song." Some of those work out and some of them don't, but it's kind of impossible to tell what will at the time.
I think it's been long enough now that I can see the warts on the album, which I assume were evident to listeners when it came out. "Collages" is a bad song. I should never, EVER, write a bassline as dumb as the one I wrote for the verse of "Nom de Guerre". "Song for Movement" might be a better song if we just took out the intro.
But for all the miscues I saw while re-visiting the record, I was also very refreshed by the fact that I'm still very proud of all of the songs. I also re-listened to Permanently and was really ashamed of how bad it is. That did not happen with Ecotone. As soon as the first track (not the intro) was about half-way through I said to myself, "You know what? This is a good song." and found myself repeating that a lot through the listen. Even the songs I don't necessarily like so much have good parts. I think the lyrics and ending of "Collages" are still good. Really, all of the lyrics are good, in my opinion and Duff doesn't get his due. The ending of "Nom de Guerre" is really fun. Maybe we're just good at writing the outros of songs? Who knows.
I've always wanted to be in a band and I guess I should count myself lucky that I've been in one that's enjoyable to be in with friends that I really like for the past 3 1/2 years. For a long time while I was in high school and university, my dream/goal/whatever was to be in a band and have a full-length record so that I could point to it or show it to people and say "This is my album." And I can do that and be proud of it.
Something funny to me is thinking about how each member of Beat Noir would react to this situation. I know that Duff would hate every song, maybe admitting that one or two had miniscule redeeming qualities. Mark would probably love every one. Colin is the wild card, though if I had to guess, his opinion would probably be close to mine.
This is also interesting to me because Beat Noir is going to Niagara on the Lake to record our second album soon. Is that breaking news?! IS THIS AN IMU EXCLUSIVE? Anyways we are and we are a much different band now. We don't practice very much. We haven't played a show in forever. We aren't nearly as active as we were when making Ecotone. In Mark's words, we sort or morphed into a "studio-only" band by accident. That sounds silly, so please know that I was joking. Though that was also due to us playing a bunch of dumb, bad shows this summer.
I don't even know it there's a central point that I'm trying to get to in this post besides "Beat Noir is different now." Maybe also that I still like our record? These seem like dumb and trite points, but I do know that I felt something while listening to the record again. It's a lot like going back and looking at an old part of your facebook timeline. These songs represent a very specific time in my life. I have great memories of writing the album in Colin's basement, Echo Base, and the Breithaup jam hall. I still remember when the album went got "released" (I was at a dinner with several art history profs and smile at my phone. Such a 21st century digital boy I am.).
I think in general though, this is a weird side of the excitement I'm feeling about recording our new songs in two weeks.
Like I said, it had been a minute since I had actually listened to the album in full, which I guess means I hadn't experienced the songs from a listener's perspective in a little while. The main way I interact with the songs is through playing them at shows, or more recently since we haven't played a show in two months, at practice. And we barely play them at practice because we're getting ready to record!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not as familiar with the songs as I once was. But I also think that an album is a work of art itself. Bands put a lot of effort into the track order, artwork, overarching themes, etc., so it's been forever since I had experienced Ecotone as a whole. I still know the songs we play live, "Nicky Driscoll", "Ancienne Gloire", "The Wars", inside out, but that's not the same for other songs. There was even songs I forgot were on the album! Somehow I forgot that "Sheltered Town / Bitter Sea" which, frankly, I think is our best song, is on the album. The Six Feet Under clip in between "Nicky Driscoll" and "Deathwish" completely slipped my mind, which is funny, considering that Ecotone is basically Six Feet Under: The Album! and we watched the entire show while writing it.
It's also much different listening to the 10 songs now, about two years later (I think?!) then it was hearing them all the time while making the album. There's a lot of things going through your mind while creating an album that seem like a good idea at the time. Making an album is a really hard and long process, so you end up having a million fucking ideas about what you want to do with your art to make it stand out, to make it good, to make each part of it distinctive and different. "Hey, we all like Sloan and Thrush a lot, so let's make this song an alt-punk song." "Hey, we like C.C.R., so let's put 70's rock riffs in this song." Some of those work out and some of them don't, but it's kind of impossible to tell what will at the time.
I think it's been long enough now that I can see the warts on the album, which I assume were evident to listeners when it came out. "Collages" is a bad song. I should never, EVER, write a bassline as dumb as the one I wrote for the verse of "Nom de Guerre". "Song for Movement" might be a better song if we just took out the intro.
But for all the miscues I saw while re-visiting the record, I was also very refreshed by the fact that I'm still very proud of all of the songs. I also re-listened to Permanently and was really ashamed of how bad it is. That did not happen with Ecotone. As soon as the first track (not the intro) was about half-way through I said to myself, "You know what? This is a good song." and found myself repeating that a lot through the listen. Even the songs I don't necessarily like so much have good parts. I think the lyrics and ending of "Collages" are still good. Really, all of the lyrics are good, in my opinion and Duff doesn't get his due. The ending of "Nom de Guerre" is really fun. Maybe we're just good at writing the outros of songs? Who knows.
I've always wanted to be in a band and I guess I should count myself lucky that I've been in one that's enjoyable to be in with friends that I really like for the past 3 1/2 years. For a long time while I was in high school and university, my dream/goal/whatever was to be in a band and have a full-length record so that I could point to it or show it to people and say "This is my album." And I can do that and be proud of it.
Something funny to me is thinking about how each member of Beat Noir would react to this situation. I know that Duff would hate every song, maybe admitting that one or two had miniscule redeeming qualities. Mark would probably love every one. Colin is the wild card, though if I had to guess, his opinion would probably be close to mine.
This is also interesting to me because Beat Noir is going to Niagara on the Lake to record our second album soon. Is that breaking news?! IS THIS AN IMU EXCLUSIVE? Anyways we are and we are a much different band now. We don't practice very much. We haven't played a show in forever. We aren't nearly as active as we were when making Ecotone. In Mark's words, we sort or morphed into a "studio-only" band by accident. That sounds silly, so please know that I was joking. Though that was also due to us playing a bunch of dumb, bad shows this summer.
I don't even know it there's a central point that I'm trying to get to in this post besides "Beat Noir is different now." Maybe also that I still like our record? These seem like dumb and trite points, but I do know that I felt something while listening to the record again. It's a lot like going back and looking at an old part of your facebook timeline. These songs represent a very specific time in my life. I have great memories of writing the album in Colin's basement, Echo Base, and the Breithaup jam hall. I still remember when the album went got "released" (I was at a dinner with several art history profs and smile at my phone. Such a 21st century digital boy I am.).
I think in general though, this is a weird side of the excitement I'm feeling about recording our new songs in two weeks.
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