Where Does It End?!

so i just checked and the last time i updated this blog was back in november, coincidentally (or not coincidentally) regarding the same subject matter .... yes, the modlins third album.

originally when i thought to start up the blog i thought it would be something great to update daily, or fairly daily, discuss the goings on within the band, put up pictures and what not. oh, how overly optimistic and naive young eric was. now, only a tad bit older, i realize "daily blog posts" is on par with TPS reports to your boss. talking about the slow progress, mistakes, days off that you needed but probably shouldn't have taken ....

i just read the 33 1/3 book for Belle and Sebastian's "If you're feeling sinister" and it was very warming (i highly recommend it, but first get the Neutral milk hotel one), but also very depressing. to know that Tigermilk was recorded in 3 days, and If you're feeling sinister in 8, truly is impressive. And now that our album is going on 7 months, you start to wonder if we've done something wrong. Granted Stuart had dedicated time in a studio to do it, and had been flushing the songs out for years on his own, but anyway .... though a lot of people have complained about production on B&S's early recordings, in reality the songs speak for themselves and i'm sure many people (myself included) cite them as some of the best records in my collection. so it's no surprise that i would start to have doubts about our own recording endeavors.

but i really think, when all is said and down, my doubts will be washed away by a truly great finished product, one that we just can't seem to get out fast enough to .. you. whoever "you" maybe. though in the middle/end of last year when work began on this record, we worked on it only occasionally, and most often were just messing around with the songs in our practice space while constantly playing shows around town, nowadays, the amount of work i spend on the album rivals my day job. recording additional percussion, reworking harmonies, rewriting songs. i mean, hell ... one of the songs in contention now has it's own reprise. We've been trying to put off shows, but the occasional one comes in that you can't turn down (Beauty Bar 3rd anniv w/ Darker my Love anyone?). But when i'm not at work (or traveling for work, damn you Erie, PA), Matt and I are holed up in my room or the upstairs hallway constantly reworking and overthinking every choice. all the while, attempting not to piss off our girlfriends or our roommates (Sixto's usually at work, but man .. Kevin, that guys a trooper)

something i should've mentioned awhile back, but has slipped my mind, is that Stoph, Matt, and myself sat down with our friends Spencer and Dan (of Specific Oceans, not Wolf Parade) to discuss the album. i don't know exactly how to get to it, but if you go to iTunes, you can find a link to podcasts somewhere and in there you can look up Specific Oceans, and there should be something about an interview with The Modlins regarding our third album. we even gave them some exclusive sneak cuts of a couple unfinished tracks, so i guess for that alone it's worth checking out.

Anyway, Though I can't really say what the album will look like in the end, i can say we're truly giving it our all this time, even more so than in past efforts. We owe a great debt to our friend Mark (who i know we've mentioned before, and we'll probably keep mentioning til the album is released) but he's been staying on the ball, keeping a list, checking it twice, and ensuring that everything on the songs is there for a reason, and any fat we can trim is.

So where are we at? when will we be done?

well, we're really hoping for a release in May still (hopefully at some point before we said we were shooting for May and not earlier), but it could be as late as end of June. but i promise it won't come after that for two reasons. One, I would like this LP to get submitted to the San Diego Music Awards (cutoff is usually june 30th). it'd be nice to be nominated three years in a row for our three albums. and Two, because if we enter July ... our first session for this album was July '08, which means we will have been working on the album, on and off, for an entire year ... and that just is horribly depressing. Though we could make excuses about all having day jobs, vacations, responsibilities, lives outside the band, the fact of the matter is, it shouldn't take a year to make a pop record (or any record for that matter)

... so anyway, thanks for being patient, tell your friends. as for the next few months, well, because we don't understand how to stop playing shows while we work on a record, we're doing a tour up the coast, getting as far as Olympia, WA before heading back down. Portland, Eugene ... cause, why not ... we've got time.

so hope to see you out there, stick with us, it's gonna get really good.

cheers! off to band practice.

oh yeah, we have a recording session schedule for valentine's day ... how very maudlin of us.