These are songs I wrote and recorded at my parents’ house in Oaxaca in early 2019, right before I went to London to record Miracle on Neon Clown Avenue.

They’re unique for me in that they were recorded with a drum machine, instead of live drums or no drums at all, like almost everything else I’ve ever done. Also noteworthy for having a very early and very different version of “Pennsylvania”, a song most people are more familiar with the version of on Hard to Break.

The lyrics on A Place That Doesn’t Exist are probably more overtly critical of capitalism than anything else I’d ever written.

I’d partly attribute this to me having become increasingly angry about the living and working conditions I and so many people I knew were increasingly subject to, and so many of us coming to a greater understanding of the structures at the root of some of our ills; I’d also attribute it to me not having had much else to write or sing about at the time, since I was about to record an 18 song album I’d spent over a year writing, and, when I asked myself, “what do I want to write about that I haven’t written a lot about on that album?” this all kind of spilled out of me, almost automatically.

released April 22, 2019