Welcome to the first #MattyMonday, the streaming debuts of songs off my album “Meta Dada”. The vinyl is available at local record stores and on my Bandcamp page, but I’ll be rolling out the songs online. If you haven’t heard the songs before, I recommend listening to them first before reading all the context and lyrics. For those who have heard the music, I hope these posts will add to your experience. 

*Note* — I am and likely always will be an Album Appreciator, and if you happen to also fall in that niche, you might consider waiting until all these songs are out (or, dude, just buy the record now) because I truly did try and shape these 12 songs for a single, continuous listening session. No judgment either way, though; just glad you’re checking out the songs, however’s your bag. 

To start this series with a big ol’ bifurcated bang, this debut post will feature two (2) songs off “Meta Dada”. 

1. “Satan Gave Me Sunglasses” 

Links

Bandcamp

Spotify

The players 

Harmonies: Cory Chisel, Sam Farrell, Alex Drossart
Mandolin: Tashi Litch
Fiddle: Evan Snoey
Piano & Organ: Alex Drossart
Acoustic Guitar, Upright Bass, Banjo: Matty Day 

The session 

We knocked this out quickly, in two, or was it one session? Alex was able to have Tashi and Evan, two students at Lawrence, recommended from someone in the music department, and they came to The Refuge, did one warm-up pass (both recording on the same track), and then nailing it on their second try. They said they’d been playing bluegrass a lot lately and yeah, they played super naturally. Cory was absolutely wonderful—I knew he would know exactly what to do, based on his outrageous music knowledge, and same thing, two takes at the most. My vocal take used was I do believe my first vocal take we laid down, intended at first as only a guide/scratch vocal, but when we went to replace it as intended, there was a solemnity to it that just fit the part, so we kept it. 

Uh, Matty, what’s the deal here 

I came up with this song maybe 15 years ago, when I was very much appreciating the melodies and harmonies of The Louvin Brothers’ gospel music. I was living in Milwaukee, but I remember going to the Green Bay Exclusive Company and sheepishly buying a CD of the Louvins’ “Songs That Tell a Story” compilation, worried Tom Smith (who I mega looked up to from the Concert Café/Rock n’ Roll High School days, but hadn’t yet befriended) would laugh me out of the store. Tom was open-minded about my selection, though, and with my heathen guilt absolved, I enjoyed the music and eventually came up with this song, my own modern crack at the style.  

One of the luxuries of working on this album so privately was the ability to confound nonexistent expectations. In this case, I guess I thought it’d be funny to make people wonder if I was using this album to declare my newfound Christianity. We managed to play it straight until the end. Upon repeat listens, it serves as about as bonkers an intro as I could have imagined, and toyed with scope and sincerity in ways that sort of blow the record open. 

Additionally, pseudo-Satanism has gotten kind of annoying; as “badass” as musicians think it is, operating within Christianity’s framework is ultimately more reverent than it is transgressive, at least by now. If I wrote this to piss off anyone, it wasn’t meek-aspirant Christians who “turn the other cheek” when attacked—where’s the fun in that? If anything it’s to weed out people who claim to be atheists but are still superstitious, or squares who don’t think their square, or people with rigid or absent senses of humor. If someone listens to this, gets a kick out of the confusion, and is still on board to hear more? Then we’re on the level! Said listener can and should proceed to Track 2. 

Lyrics 

Satan Gave Me Sunglasses 

Darkened down my days 

Jesus plucked those sunglasses 

Off my frightened face 

Had Jesus Christ not intervened 

My life would be a waste 

Thank you, Jesus 

Thank you, Lord 

You’ve brightened up my days 

My brights had dimmed 

My range had shrunk 

Just like the addict 

Who cannot kick junk 

I try to make my life meaningful 

Although it’s craving- and fiending-ful 

Track 2: “Media Casualty” 

Links

Bandcamp

Spotify

The players 

The session 

Marko from The Lately struck me as the guy for drums on this one. My direction for him was basically to drum nonsensically, and to play to emulate a kid playing with the drum settings on a keyboard who keeps hitting the “fill” button at random. Marko’s an adventurous beast of a drummer and he laid waste to this one. Mike from The Lately also happened to be at The Refuge for this session. Alex and Sam helped to make it a bit more psychedelic and noisy at the end. I always intended it to be a fadeout, but we nearly kept what we had because of how fun it and candid the track ended. I’m glad we did keep it, because as is, both sides of the album seriously stressed the capabilities of how much music can fit on vinyl before the sound quality degrades. 

Once again this was all first- or second-take stuff that made it. This would be the first case of something that happened a few times, where I didn’t recognize until the session that I had no idea what I was going to do on bass. Sam suggested just playing a simple one-note driving part, which is 100% the reason this song works. 

Uh, Matty, what’s the deal here 

I came up with the guitar part perhaps seven years ago at Travis Pashek’s house before we started a Foamers? practice. I thought it might go toward that band, but I never pushed myself to make anything of it. The main riff always struck me as a Velvet Underground style, and the “chorus” like something The Hives would do. I only came up with the other, Eb to B part when I finally set about making a song out of it for this record. 

I didn’t have any idea what it’d be like vocally, though eventually the “chorus” melody popped in my head in a real Eagles of Death Metal way. Lyrically, the concept of a media casualty struck me over the last couple years, particularly with people who just seemed to have this new, entirely modern vacuity about them, whether jaded or humorless, which seems entirely the result of over-ingesting screen-based content. I’m hardly blameless in this regard, but I’d like to think I haven’t content-consumed my wits away (though, in a Dunning-Kruger sense, who wouldn’t want to think that).  

At any rate, I’m empathetic; we’ve never been faced with the awesome addiction of media stimulation, and I worry about the human brain’s ability to handle it. Just like the poor “acid casualties” of the late ‘60s who burned themselves out seeking… something… media casualties essentially do the same, though with far more socially acceptable (and in the case of iPads/phones given to toddlers, parentally mandated) means. 

I write this as a recovering childhood television junkie (among other media maladies), who also got to experience a good portion of pre-internet childhood. Though I have that perspective, I’m not promoting abstinence. Your brain is invaluable; seek what makes it stronger. 

Note: the song (and album, really) is laden with references to the works, philosophies, and anti- if not pre-Christian “immorality” of Friedrich Nietzsche. If Track 1 “took the toys away,” I had to try and offer not an outright (certainly in the metaphysical sense) replacement, but a means of overcoming one’s existence. Active nihilism—the willful imposition of meaning, not the shirking, passive whiling away of screen addiction. 

Lyrics 

Ladies and gentlemen: We’ll be doing away with dying. 

You see, long ago when the tiger smoked and the rabbit talked to dragons and all that crap… 

We begin our sprint down a predetermined digital path. 

Now, rather than stare at the void annoyed, miffed with infinity, 

A canvas can piss me off only so much before I glorify it. 

A work in progress—pre-apocalypse. 

A mess o’ molecules n’ memories 

Why plant a flower in a field of weeds? 

The end of history, birth of tragedy 

Alright: alligator prayers it is, 

Ads for graveyards. 

You didn’t ask but you got all access. 

Faberge eggs to the dregs, keg stands of NA beer… 

The virgins think it’s sexy! 

I wrote this song while you were all asleep 

Oh so susceptible to messaging 

Some people call it “compassion fatigue” 

No one bemoans a Media Casualty 

Oh no! 

Tonight the bottleneck cheered me up 

Yes I’m intense—but I just live once 

I mean… 

What kind of sad-sack would I be if I said “no”? 

I don’t ever wanna know! 

Get it off me! 

Bits of tail still stuck in my teeth (spit) 

See, I never woke up this morning, 

Cuz I never really went to sleep last night. 

Nope. The The… 

Teenage clicks, the elder scrolls, 

And the baby swipes… 

Unconscious stream-o’-genealogy o’ more-er’-less in hyper-real love 

I want ALL of the above! 

…Great service: but a bad product 

Hook it uppp 

I need some shuteye or a viral tweet 

Deciding between death n’ dopamine 

Crawl on your knees for authenticity 

Someday you’ll wish you had a man like me! 

I am a thing, you’re an idea 

Let us not perish via media! 

We’ll grab a front-row seat to this Shinola show. 

In latine: ecce homo 

Gimme just a minute to convince myself I care 

Ya know, it’s harder than it seems to keep these wise words 

From you baby birds n’ ne’er-do-wells 

And if you don’t believe me, I don’t know WHAT I’ll do! 

But consider this a warning I never got: 

Trading arms to buy new boxing gloves… 

Abandoned to novelty’s charms… 

I would if I could but FINE— 

Cauterize my bleeding heart! 

Easier done than said— 

Lean into the struggle, baby! 

Bruce Hornsby n’ brunch… 

Doing whippets n’ watching “Zeitgeist”… 

This GENEROUS universe… 

I’m giving Ma Nature a brand-new vacuum. 

But we can’t just bond over the things we think suck— 

That’s not enough! 

Society’s a social construct! 

Brainwashed, sloshed, n’ noshed by subtle cults… 

You Are Hereby Absolved of All Matters Grey, Matty Day! 

Activate the consumers!! 

…Paedomorph blues… 

The video 

When Frank Anderson came in to record on Track 5 we showed him the other songs we’d done, and he just loved this one—he made Sam pause it so he could adequately take it in. Almost immediately he said he wanted to do a video for this song, and he had the concept from the start. Filming was incredible. I even kind of trained for it because I knew how hard he would push me, and even still, what a rush! Frank is brilliant, and he and I will one day unleash mindblowing future work together. 

Enjoy this clip from before the video/album debuted: 

See you next Monday with Track 3!

-Matty