My garden is slowly dying. It dawned on me yesterday as I harvested a handful of cereal box textured green beans bound straight for the compost bin. There is an invisible enemy wreaking havoc on those beans, the squash pollinated indecisively, the herbs simply refuse to grow, and the tomatoes are all falling off the vine half-blackened underneath.

I want to blame it all on slugs, those nasty leopard print nocturnal villains. At least then I could point the finger at my laziness to simply purchase some cheap beer and set it out in a tin can. I don’t really want to spend any money on cheap beer, and there’s the hope that some hipster friend will invite me to a party where I can wait til everyone gets drunk and then sneak a giant can of PBR out to the car. When it comes to crappy beer, I’d almost rather light some money on fire and see if the flames are a better slug deterrent. It would save me the trouble of finding a tin can.

All that is to say that sometimes you think you’re really good at something when, bang, your beans die, or your basil withers, or you hear your musical aptitudes captured on tape in a way that makes you decide they are musical ineptitudes and how on earth did you convince yourself that you should be singing live ever? I won’t be so transparent as to point your web browser to the recording in question, as the assignment for blogging this week was to “Make People Want To Come To Our Show,” but I will mention the unique results of this round of self-awareness which are to a.) quit the amphetamines and b.) conjure up a voice teacher. Lessons start in 2 weeks, but until then I am retraining my ADD tormented cognitive pathways to respond to coffee, which comes with the exciting bonus of restructuring my weak and indecisive digestive plumbing.

It has been a melancholy few days, then, feeling rather dramatically that everything I touch turns into a pile of dust. Or at least a pile of compost. Singing compost, actually. There’s an image for you.

From a very young age I have understood that special bands have albums I can associate with deeply personal, wordless emotions: Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s pack a one-two punch of despair and elation on The Dust of Retreat; Wilco’s Summerteeth is for lying on my back in the dark at the end of a long, loveless day; and Matt Pond PA’s Emblems delicately encapsulates the end of a heartbreakingly perfect summer before fall and grown-upness set in. I’m always amazed, then, when our songs provide enough leverage to pull me out of a deep funk. How many times have I played Long Coats, No Energy over and over and over? “Not nearly enough!” say my bandmates. Yet something in the music of Good Night, States has patched this week’s leaks in my under-filled container of self-assurance.

So whether you’ve been living on the heights, bogged in despondency, or are just surviving a khaki-pants bland sort of existence, I do hope you’ll come see us on Saturday, and that some part of the evening will change, if even for a few minutes, the way you feel about life. And if you can’t make it, well, maybe you should join me in my garden infirmary sometime. We can sing out of tune and watch the slugs get drunk.

dear reader,

forgive the tasteless wordplay. just wanted to take a second before an intensely, intensely busy week begins to thank everyone who came to the thunderbird show last night. we had an awesome time and we hope you did, too.

joe and i drove home today in a slightly deeper than usual stupor, despite some great conversations, exciting plans for chopping the little silvertone chord organ we (believe it or not) drove back from pgh today, and the incredible relief of robust air conditioning after a pretty sweaty weekend.

tomorrow night we’re going to set up the “impossible tension” rig and start getting ready to perform these songs for the first time next saturday at club cafe. it’s pretty exciting. i almost can’t wait, actually. we listened to each track in the car today and tried to figure out which keyboard each of joe’s hands would be playing and when, who’d twist each knob, etc. it’s going to be a challenge, for sure.

please come next week. it’s going to be a great show. i can only hope the acoustic stuff will be a chance to uncover something in each song that you all haven’t heard before.

sleep well.

dear reader,

somewhat hilariously, in my last post (one month ago) i stated that i wanted to blog here regularly. where have i been?

of course, the week+ of “rest” i was so looking forward to turned into nearly two weeks of sickness, followed immediately by a frenzy of recording and mixing for “sometimes i see you on the lawn” (have you listened to it yet?), followed immediately thereafter by a frenzy of prep for a summer music program i’m teaching. in fact, my voice cleared up enough to sing “sometimes” literally just in time–the LAST day i had available to track before i needed to begin mixing to get the track out in time.

in short, i apologize.

and that leads nicely into a couple of informal announcements:

1. there’s a new track today, “moonlight.”

2. it’s the last internet release until sometime in the fall.

we’re not 100% on when exactly we’ll start up again with the once-a-month singles. joe and i are going to be finishing “in the impossible tension” on our own time here in nj, but we won’t be releasing the last two tracks individually. all i’ll say is that there’ll be no august releases (except maybe a physical copy of “in the impossible tension,” MAYBE), and probably no september ones either.

don’t cry, tickles. it’s good! i’m sure you all have been postponing your vacations for fear of getting behind in this relentless listening march to the proverbial sea, so… here you go. take that cruise. go visit your family.

in any event, watch for announcements on that.

truth is, we’ve had a pretty great (albeit busy) june and 1st half of july, what with the big summer festival show a few weeks ago, some more glowing reviews of that set and “short films on self-control,” “not come around” getting some play on wyep in addition to “killer of the one,” and a feeling of some renewed drive for playing a bunch more shows. i’m really hoping we can take breathers here and there to enjoy what IS going on, and balance a bit in our hearts the drive to make more happen.

well… i’ve got to get to school. but it’s good to see you again, reader.