I have so much to say about this album, because if I’m being really honest, my fingerprints are all over it. But I’m not going to say it all at once, so let’s start at the beginning (which is a very good place to start).
Pivot was indisputably the first song written on Expansion. It’s a running joke amongst the garages that Bertie never misses, and I had the first cut of this song written maybe a week after the first kick off meeting.
That kick off meeting is important because we had a great pool of songwriters, and originally a double vinyl worth of time limit. So we’d allocated how many songs to a side, roughly how much time each song could have to fit on the vinyl, and the overall flow of themes from Blaseball that we’d touch at which points, then it was up to all the different songwriters to sort of preference what they wanted off the album.
And I was like “oh, I know exactly what energy I want to start this thing off with. Gimme that a slot 1.”
Whilst the structure of that first draft has persisted to the final version, the evolution of the song took another couple of weeks. See, the first draft pulled a lot of influence from [REDACTED] and some initial feedback from an early songwriter’s listening party was that this sat quite at odds with the tone of the rest of the album, and perhaps drew too heavily on that source influence.
So, I pivoted and added more Bertie. This ended up adding more energy, which well… you’ll see.
Remember how I said my fingers were all over this album. Well, I originally only had the one songwriting credit to the album, but along the ways we had a range of shifts in the album overall. There were songs partially written that had to get pulled (because song writers had become unavailable or had outgrown the people they were when the song was first drafted)… that’s life post-blaseball, right?
Well, one of those gaps eventuated in my other solo writing credit (and check those timestamps):
The thing is, that’s a lot of time interposed as a song writer, but even more importantly as a performer. The vocals on [REDACTED] eclipsed Pivot’s vocals (blaseball pun intended) so much so that it sounded like two different singers. So, in 2024 or 2025 (time blurs), I went back to Pivot and re-recorded all the vocals. And then more vocals. And then more. And then more.
I think this really summaries Expansion as a whole: so many times, we’ve individually and collectively wanted to give more. I shan’t dare trawl discord to count it, but the amount of times a songwriter would hear how someone had improved their song and responded with “well, fuck, how do I follow that?!” is … a lot.
Without big upping it too much, I think this album is really special because every track feels crafted in a way that we never could have had the time for in the original Garages blur.
But it’s also why it’s taken so long. I’ve never wanted to let any of the songs get left behind. At a certain point in the album process, I stepped in to take over some of the organisation and also took up mixing and providing production assistance to a decent chunk of the tracks as well. I’ll leave it to others to assess how much that has helped or hindered, but it does mean that all of these 21 songs (even the ones I haven’t touched directly) feel almost like my children.
And so as a tasty little treat, I’ll leave you with the (almost prophetic) opening lyrics to Pivot/Expansion:
“Bigger and better than ever before
We left you waiting, but you still want more.”
