Tuesday, 11 January 2011


Anatomy of an album
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This is how some of the Anatomy ideas got patched-up in my head, this shape, this thing, this album.
Had this picture in my mind: that desolated beach scene, where someone's about to make a life-changing decision, and we don't know exactly which direction that gun's gonna go, and what the outcome of the story will be.
And yet, the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that the outcome was damn right obvious:
the Anatomy album itself IS the outcome of that decision, and the result of this 8 year long process.
Anatomy is an observation, a muted close-up, an inspection of sorts, this cutting up into smaller pieces, to see the core of this weird little fucked-up beast, heart still moving.
That grey beach was the starting point. Facing the fog and the abyss beyond the horizon where the lives of all man, great and small, fall into nothingness. And the turning point was the sharp moment when a decision was taken, and the gun, that could have easily gone straight into the head, was instead pointed forward into the unknown. defiantly.
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Songs were written without thinking, and each one a new addition to a bigger patchwork, a shape you're creating, but you're oblivious to.
At some point, as the process unraveled, I guess you became part of it too, your very own analysis, your anatomical inspection of this Drugstore chapter, as we rowed our way forward, and with that, the realisation that we were not alone.
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But what is the moral of the story?
This is how I read it:
Although no question Anatomy is probably going to be Drugstore's most personal album, filled with some sadness, some despair, and a good dose of miss m attitude, I think, ultimately, it is about how music can hold you together when you're in pieces.
How you need to be a little craze and irrational, and have the guts to demand some happiness and fulfillment, to barge your way through anything.
How pursuing that which you love profoundly and freely is still the only meaningful way to live your life, for without it, life is but a grim shadow of 'could have beens' and 'wish I hads' - constantly reminding you of the infinite possibilities you had before you, but made very little use of, and that is sinful.
For no matter how beat and down, or overwhelmed by troubles and disappointment, not miss m, but us, you and I and everyone, we have the ability to rise; That is something very powerful within us all, we have the means to translate the abstract into concrete, to create things, change our lives and how we spend our brief time 'stuck in space and time'.
The back cover will show a crucial element of how I got from A to Z, from standing on that grim beach, thinking it's all over, to hearing a melody in my head, and saying:
Fuck it - I'm gonna get through this, no matter how hard the waves hit, because there is something that still keeps my heart beating and feeling everything so deeply, something so much bigger than my own little self, and I'm so in love with it, because even on a bad day, it makes me glad to still be alive:
music.
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next: album songs outlines/history of drugstore sound. dissection. who's in da house.
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ps- cover sketch 1: I'll prob end up sketching 1/2 dozen different ideas, before 'send to print' day, we might end up w/ a pic of a mad dog laughing?
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