On The Hopeful Clutter

I’ve got to get something off my chest. It’s something that I’ve felt weird about for almost a month now, but somehow in this current phase of life I’ve been filling my days with busy work (ie practicing drums) and I’ve put off writing for the last couple of weeks. Writing is generally where I do my sharpest thinking, so I’ve been avoiding this weird feeling by not acknowledging it.

The truth is, I have an album I was going to release. I was going to release it next week, with a full band show at the Merri Creek Tavern in Melbourne. I had dates lined up in Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide. I released the first single Lucy back in late Feb, to a small amount of online attention, and then, to be brutally honest, I lost heart.

This is an album I started recording in April 2019. Literally a year ago today. I pieced it together with a collection of friends over two days of recording. I spent the next nine months recording and re-recording vocals in my shed. I finally pulled out the stops and got it mixed and mastered in January. I got my dear friend Nick Pensa to create some stunning artwork, and here’s the kicker… I got 100 physical CDs printed.

They arrived at my house in mid-Feb. I sold three of them to random people at gigs (if you’re one of those people and you’re reading this, then bloody good on ya, holding a weird piece of history right there). And now I’ve got a box of CDs sitting on my bedroom floor. They’ve sat there since the day they were made.

I had grand plans to do a physical release. Then I had grand plans to do an online release. Then I slowly lost all my plans and stopped thinking about that band and those songs and these social media pages. Instead I retreated to my backyard shed and started practicing drums obsessively. But here’s the problem. I’m a totally project-oriented person. I love to have a three month plan, where I can physically tick off the to-do list and claim ‘YES. I’VE DONE IT. THAT’S OVER.’ Then I start thinking about the next project.

But this album that I spent a year recording, the songs that came out of a couple of years of being a human represents a project that’s not complete. And even though I genuinely thought about putting the box of CDs into the wheelie bin out the front of our house on a Sunday evening (hello bin night), I think it’s important that I see this project through.

Even more important is that I see it through with the original intention of the project. I hilariously called the album ‘The Hopeful Clutter’, and I guess I’m hoping it’s relevant in a world where live music is dead and buried, and our sense of community is tied into computer screens and online streams.

So here’s the deal. I want people to have the physical version of The Hopeful Clutter. There’s exactly 95 copies (well 97, but I’m keeping two for myself). I’m not putting it on any of the streaming websites. I’m not putting it on iTunes. I’m just putting it on Bandcamp, and you can ‘pay what you feel’. I know that 90% of my friends have lost work, I know the arts community has been decimated, I know some of my dearest friends are having trouble putting food on the table hence it feels little greedy to be taking money from an ever shrinking audience pot when I’ve still got a couple of days of teaching to keep me alive during these times. All I’m asking is you cover the physical postage costs. If you choose to throw in some more money then bless your little heart. I’ll put a little surprise in every package, although I’m not sure what that’s going to be yet. Maybe a handwritten version of my lentil Bolognese recipe.

If you read this far then you can order it right here, right now.

I love you all and I miss you seeing you face to face. I hope The Hopeful Clutter that exists in my mind finds a place within yours.

…

Part two, the artwork:

I want to delve a little into the artwork Nick Pensa made for me, and some hidden little gems that I got him to incorporate in to it.

My pitch to him was a collaged image that evokes the ‘general anxiety on the death of humanity’ (how prescient, this was on January 5th, 2020). Nick came back with three ideas, one of which was a silhouette of my head, stuffed full of random objects. I loved the silhouette because it was so obviously me without being me, so I re-pitched the concept, using that silhouette and a selection of random objects. This was the list: sparrow, couch, bones, bicycle, coffee percolater (one of those Italian ones?), bottle of wine, a small dog, an instrument maybe drum or guitar, a backyard shed, running shoes, a beard.

I also sent him the two pictures below, asking if he could find a way to incorporate these. These two pictures hang on my living room wall and were made by two amazing women. The first one is painting of peonies, made by my Grandma. The second is a landscape by my Mum.