This album is a redos-and-rarities compilation of odds and ends from my last 5 years of songwriting.

1. Keys
This song was originally on Fall, with just the first and second verse/chorus. Andy Ondrejech jammed it with me and he changed the chord progression, and I wrote a third verse and a bridge to fill out the song more. I like it a lot more now.

2. Fall III
This song was also on Fall originally, but it was untitled and it was also a really terrible demo that I just never re-recorded. I thought the song deserved a second chance.

3. Dark Tree
Another song from Fall that was done just a little too haphazardly for my taste. I looked back on it and could barely hear the vocals and the guitar peaked in a few places, so I wanted to do it justice. Very inspired by Nick Drake, with a really odd tuning. It was really hard to remember because I haven’t played it since I wrote it.

4. Night Fishing
This is one of my personal favorites. I wrote and recorded it in one day. When I recorded it in Andrew Kilgore’s basement, his brother was sitting on the couch next to me playing video games, and along with the ridiculous tape hiss, you can hear him bouncing up and down and button mashing. When Austin McMaken was working on a project at Lava Room, I took the opportunity to redo the song in a professional studio, with new bass/trumpet/drum parts. The song itself is about a few different things. ‘If you constantly do what other people want instead of what you want, you won’t be happy’ is the most prevalent message. In the lyrics are adages to other local bands I loved. ‘When you go the long way’ references the song “Long Way To Go” by Shades of Grey, and ‘wake up put your head up high, today is a new day’ is a reference to “A New Day” by One Hand Clap. ‘Looks like somebody’s brought their thesarus’ was something said in a review of Tokyo Police Club’s first album, and a shirt I was wearing that day had a fisherman on the lake at night on it, so the inspiration stemmed from there. But in the end, it is still a love song about the same person most of the love songs on Fall are about.

5. Wishful Thinking
A very early scrapped song from Black Sun, when I wanted to write songs that sounded like Paul Baribeau. I first recorded it with Dan Pickler, on the same night that I first recorded Winter. It’s kind of about breaking someone’s heart by telling them you don’t love them, and its original title was ‘Half Heart’.

6. Youth
Another scrapped song from Black Sun, this song seemed fake when I would sing it, even though I really meant it. I couldn’t get a good performance out of myself, so I took it off the tracklisting.

7. Sanity
I was in love with Death Cab For Cutie (and still am) during the time I wrote this song, and I wanted it to feel like “Stability”, even though it didn’t turn out like it. It didn’t seem to fit with Black Sun, so it was left out as well

8. Mitochondrial Cytopathy
I entered a contest with this song, which had people create art to match a piece of scientific research (the topic I picked was Mitochondrial Cytopathy, I don’t remember why). I didn’t like the idea of writing a song for the purpose of winning a contest because it isn’t a song that is important to me, but it was good enough to get onto a rarities/retakes EP so that means something I think.

9. I Can Feel The Cold On Me
This is still in my mind as one of the most fun nights of my life. Dan Socha, Dann Herwerden, Andrew Kilgore, Joey Dziedziak and I got together to record my first EP one night in December 2009. This version was recorded by Kilgore, and I ended up using the version that Joey recorded on the EP instead, but this one is good too.

10. Breathe
This song is the very first thing I ever recorded. Mr. Reynolds, my high school French teacher, had a creative gathering called The Blurr every year where every budding songwriter in Berea High could feel what it’s like to record in a real studio. I was really nervous, and it shows. The song itself is a total ripoff of another song, but it was the first song I wrote so I was proud of it at the time. A pretty different version ended up on Raised Unexpectations. I guess I included this to show the kindness given to me when I started, and as a bit of nostalgia.