Beauty is Imperfection

My 11th album, “The Church of Low Expectations” is now available on Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby, released under my nom de rock,  Salon de la Guerre. It’s a pop album of dark doings, where strained, ethically challenged characters straddle the abyss but reach for the light. As I say on the music sites, it continues my “exploration of electronic music as a means of balancing noise and melody. Its lyrics include small vignettes of players and grifters who wistfully muse about life, helplessness and horror.”

This is my fourth album in 2016. I somehow managed to get 65 new songs produced since January after switching to Garage Band software on my iPhone 6s. Again, I don’t know if this is an advertisement for me or for Apple. I did sometimes use available loops and drum beats from Garage Band, but I also discovered a heretofore undiscovered talent to play piano–as long as it’s a tiny piano on a tiny phone. That made the arranging fast and easy.

Though “The Church of Low Expectations” and “Roses Don’t Push the Car Home” (released a couple of months ago) were recorded simultaneously and were really twin albums, I did see them diverging in theme and mood. “Roses” is more poppy and upbeat, and “Church” is more brooding and experimental, much more focused on dark themes like death and isolation, but unlike my album “Toe-Tapping Songs of Pain and Loss,” it’s thrown over garage rock noise for electronica and hip-hop beats.

It was a big leap for me and probably strange for anybody who has heard or liked any of my older albums. But it was worth it. Blame it on Apple, but I found new things I could do with music this year and I don’t know if I’ve ever been as excited or confident about making it.

For now, I’m going to let it rest. Of course, I have more song fragments in my head, but for now I need to attend to my long-neglected novels. If my time with music has taught me anything, it’s that finishing things feels really great.

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