My First Rodeo

"For the first few years, they spent hours underground, watching the flow of passengers getting on and off trains and moving through stations. They studied their habits. Where did they go? Where did they look for information?" — How graphic design legend Massimo Vignelli cracked the NYC subway system

WOW

"The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is a collection of nearly one thousand songs culled from the private record collection of the late Harry Smith."

I came upon this page which compiles everything James Joyce said about Ulysses to others in letters and otherwise. I was stunned to find this fairly straight forward structure of the novel broken down like this:

Why are industrial control rooms so often seafoam green?

"In the fall of 1919, Faber Birren entered the Art Institute at the University of Chicago, only to drop out in the spring of 1921 to commit himself to self-education in color, as such a program didn’t exist. He spent his days interviewing psychologists and physicists and conducted his own color studies, which were considered unconventional at the time. He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it would make him go mad."

"Birren and DuPont created a master color safety code for the industrial plant industry, with the aim of reducing accidents and increasing efficiency within plants. These color codes were approved by the National Safety Council in 1944 and are now internationally recognized, having been mandatory practice since 1948."

10 years ago today, we released our 5th album, A Band is Something to Figure Out. For a limited time, get it on vinyl for only $10 (!) to celebrate.

What does the band want? The band doesn't know what they want.

This album represented a hard reset for the Hills. As the opening track declares, "Say goodbye to home / We're out here all alone / We're starting over, it's year zero / where the nights go on and on."

It is the only Hills album without any trumpet on it, with Brian pivoting to only synthesizer for all of these songs. The idea was to pare down the arrangements to their bones and put together the kind of songs an old folkie would make if they were transported to the present day and forced to front a post-punk guitar/synth outfit. Originally titled Deluxer Mandatory, it was changed to A Band is Something to Figure Out after two of the Hills saw Built to Spill live while experiencing the effects of Psilocybin and, looking around the room—at the band and its audience—the title appeared in their consciousness and would not depart.

The album was recorded 1809 Studios in Macedon, NY with the great Dave Drago returning as engineer/co-producer after helming 2014's Have You Ever Done Something Evil?. UK novelist Jonathan Lee traveled to the U.S. to watch the band make the record with plans to write a book about the process and the band in general. The book is still unreleased to this day.

The record, in the end, was full of deeply distorted power-pop, unregulated earworms, and lyrics chock full of anxiety about the immediate future—both personal and national. The anxiety turned out to be well founded. As the penultimate track says, "the truth surrounded me like the rings inside a tree / at least the early visions were kind."

We're still trying to figure it out. Hope you are too.

Even this NYT homepage headline today, covering the most insane thing he's ever said, sanewashes it for him. No reference that the threat was to murder the entire civilization, or even death in an abstract sense. The word "threaten" doesn't report on this accurately. This is journalistic failure.