Neutral Poetry LP: First Recordings, Unreleased Demos (2009-2010)

Limited to 500 copies. Mastered by Elysian. 

While we were working on Face Down In The Garden, Patrick found a box of unlabeled cassette tapes in the attic. They turned out to be 4-track recordings from the earliest days of our band, including the original versions of Marathon, South Carolina and Baltimore — the songs that launched our career back in 2010. We re-recorded them for our debut LP in 2011 because we were insecure about how lo-fi they were. We tried our best to duplicate what we liked about the demos in the studio, but the re-recordings lost some of the magic—something we’ve always regretted. Though we would never write anything like this today, these demos contain aspects of ourselves I wish we hadn’t lost touch with. The youthful exuberance! The total lack of self-consciousness! We didn’t care about doing anything the right way. All my vocals went through a guitar pedal and it sounds like I am singing to you from underground one hundred years ago. Some of these songs aren’t even songs— just outlines of ideas that hint at potential. Stumbling upon our first recordings while working on our last felt like a moment of cosmic symmetry.