I am very proud to announce the latest alternative-rock album by Salon de la Guerre: It’s called Standing Close To Power and Catching Its Cold, and it’s now available on all the major streaming services, including Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and Bandcamp, as well as other places where music is (still) sold.
Like all my albums, this one is available only digitally.
I’m also proud to announce that with this release, I now have 500 copyrighted songs in circulation. I’m chuffed about this for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that even though I’m an aging guy, I feel like I’m in my creative prime. When I was in my 20s and confused and sad and unproductive most of the time, the conventional wisdom says my art should have been much better. And yet most of the art I made in my 20s was horrible shit.
Things got better in my 30s, really good in my 40s, and now here I am in my 50s, a husband and dad, churning out stuff that I think rocks pretty hard and certainly sounds like the best stuff I’ve ever made. I feel more lyrically focused too. And dare I say it, as someone who never thought of myself as a singer, I now don’t hate my voice anymore.
The new album was designed to be punk rock with two guitars trading off leads. That probably puts me closer to the Replacements than the Ramones this time out. There are a couple of notable exceptions in the stylistic approach: The first song, called “This Town Needs Secrets,” is my first ’70s style power pop song. I did not make it that way on purpose. Sometimes, as you’re producing a song (or any piece of art, really), putting together the random pieces, you realize what it’s becoming, and at that point it’s your job to just get out of the way and let it live.
The last song on the album, “The World’s Pain Leaked Through Her Shirt,” is an electronic piece composed on Apple’s Logic Pro X. It wasn’t guitar rock. In fact, it was more like an outtake from a previous bunch of songs I made two years ago when my mindset was more about the Talking Heads. But the song seemed flippant enough to qualify as punk.
The lyrics seem to be (since I don’t plan those either) about the desires and angers that seethe in domesticity, as well as sexual politics and gossipy little towns (not unlike one I used to live in). I’ve thrown in some allusions to my favorite poets for those interested in hunting for that kind of thing.
As always, the album was written, performed, arranged and produced by yours truly at my home studio in New York. I’m responsible for all the guitar parts; the rest of the sounds were made with my terrific Logic Pro software. (I also designed the cover.)
Beauty is Imperfection 