Hey everyone,

This September, after taking the bar exam and spending some time traveling, Haiyun and I settled into our new apartment in New York. She started work immediately, but I had two months left before my start date. I spent the first week unpacking boxes, assembling furniture, and generally nesting, but I got restless pretty quickly.

Around that time, I read an article about Ryan Adams that mentioned that his recording studio and label imprint, Pax Am, are named after a fake record label he started in high school. Apparently he would pass around Pax Am compilation cassettes filled with recordings by "bands" of different styles, all of whom were really just him. I actually did a similar thing in high school, posting songs under names like Duh Rapp, Mansions and Palaces, SharKs, and the Avatar Logo to the Myspace page of my "label," Mittens Are Emo. Basically, the only differences between Ryan Adams and me are that he's a talented musician and that cassettes have made a comeback.

Feeling inspired, I decided to spend my free time not doing anything productive, but instead recording a bunch of songs for the tenth(ish) anniversary of Mittens Are Emo. Rather than just doing a bunch of rap songs, I decided to write, and then immediately record, whatever I felt like: no genre restrictions, no lyrical themes, no attempt at cohesion.

As of today, October 31, I've come up with nine songs and one awkward PSA for the first-ever Mittens Are Emo compilation. There are two rap tracks, lots of terrible attempts at playing the guitar, and a lot of even worse singing. I'm an awful singer. I have constant pitch problems that I can hear but can't fix, I don't know how not to go hoarse immediately, and there's no register or voice that feels "natural" to me. Everything is awkward. So sorry about that. Also for the bad guitar.

I didn't set out to say anything in particular with these songs. They ended up being about a lot of the same things: getting older, balancing a natural tendency toward nostalgia with an appreciation of the present, not knowing how to entertain myself, and being very happily in a relationship with the amazing person who went to work every day while I sat at home and played guitar (and being terrible about writing "relationship songs," rather than just songs about myself, which Haiyun thankfully called me out on).

I think some of the songs are pretty good. Some of them are pretty bad. I'm happy with some, and others could use serious work. Overall, though, this was a fun exercise. I'm not sure when I'll have time to do something like this again, but I have this collection as a document of what I do with too much free time. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for listening!

Grant


SONG NOTES:

ACT YOUR AGE

This is the big thesis statement that sounds nothing like anything else on this collection.

It's about an obnoxious, very meta problem: coming to terms with being very happy about a life I never dreamed of as a child. For years, I've been conflicted about following interests and values my seventeen year-old self wouldn't have shared. I often feel like a sell-out, a fraud, or just a boring person. I wrote a Low Res song, "A Long Time Ago (I Used to Be Cool)," about this exact concern.

But change is not necessarily good or bad; it often just is. As an adult, I'm finally starting to realize that shifting priorities are not always something to be ashamed of. Yes, I might be boring to an idealistic teenager, but I don't think I'd want to be a grown version of that same teenager anymore. It is a very long time ago that I used to be cool, but I'm really starting to like not being cool.

NO PRESSURE (BUT I LIKE IT WHEN YOU'RE HERE)

Me not working for two months put Haiyun in an awkward spot that I didn't appreciate at first: though she had just started work and needed to put in time to impress the bosses, she also had a useless fiance at home who was waiting every night for her to return.

I was trying to be supportive by running errands and cooking dinner, but this just put more pressure on her to be home in time for dinner and to remember and articulate all her needs when I asked about errands. Oops.

How do you find a balance between "I really appreciate spending time with you and miss you when you're gone" and "please don't feel any pressure to organize your life around me because you have other, very important obligations?" That's this song.

MAINE

Haiyun and I began dating in October 2011. This song is about the first week of that relationship, starting at the lake house of a friend's parents in Maine. I ended up proposing outside of the very same house two years later.

The house in Maine is one of the impossibly beautiful locations that already feels like a warm memory the first time you see it. I tried to create that feeling in the guitar lines, followed by a big, distorted, wraparound hug at the end.

YOUNGER

As much as I came to terms with in Track 1, being an adult can kind of suck. Haiyun has had some late evenings and long weeks already, and I'm sure I'll have my share when I start work next week.

It can be difficult to think to yourself "so, this is it. This is my life," even if that life is amazing. After all, no present can compare to the limitless possibility of the future. The future was what made the mundanities of middle-class teenagerdom - hanging out in parking lots or coffee shops, developing hopeless crushes, reading "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," listening to The Cure - seem so significant to both of us, thousands of miles of apart and nearly a decade from first meeting, in high school

I wrote this as a reminder that, even though we're different people than we used to be, and even though we didn't know each other during those infinite, dramatic, endlessly important teenage years, we can still be excited by the possibility and potential of life in the present day. And of course I had to try to sound like Robert Smith.

NEXT TO YOU

When Haiyun started work, I tried really hard to stay on her schedule: get up with her in the morning, fall asleep with her at night. I'm not very good at going to sleep or waking up, though, and these problems were made no better when we put a TV in our bedroom.

This is a lazy, sleepy, warm song about being lazy, sleepy, and warm, next to someone I want to be lazy, sleepy, and warm with.

A MESSAGE FROM GRANT

I feel weird about posting clickbait articles and stuff like that on Facebook, so here are some thoughts on stuff. Let me know if you have thoughts too!

FREE TIME

This is literally what happens when I have too much free time.

I'm a really competitive person in the sense that I'm constantly disappointed with myself and worry that other people think I'm worthless. I know a lot of people who are competitive in the sense that they like to beat people at things. They usually beat me at things.

HERE WE ARE

These lyrics are terrible, meaningless, and about me when they should not be. I ran out of time to rewrite them.

WHAT YOU WANNA DO

This song is about trying to figure out where to go for dinner, a problem we face a lot. Like the rest of my family, I'm a notoriously bad decision-maker.

I have a tendency to project my lack of decisiveness on other people, telling myself that I just want to do what they want to, and that everything would be easier if they'd just speak up. This is often true but usually unfair. Haiyun, and everybody else who's ever had to go through the "where do you want to go? I don't care, where do you want to go?" thing with me: I'm sorry.

I'm lucky to be with someone who hasn't left me for this and who has very patiently encouraged me to be less indecisive and lazy. I'm very happy about that. Things are good right now :)