Candy Macabre, 1 year later - Wednesday, May 28, 2025

I live in a bike shop: One Gear For No One

Album Anniversary

[Don’t forget: Tickets for the Eulogy gig on 7/5 with Drowning Leo and friends!]

The end of May marks the one-year anniversary of the release of the first Indoor Condor album, Candy Macabre. “Release” in this case means I pressed the album on vinyl and put it up on all the streamers, and just as importantly, I called it an album. This was a big deal for me. After playing/recording music off and on since high school, this was my first “real” album.

A copy of the album with the original collage that goes along with this copy. ICYMI, each of the 200 copies of the album came with (among other treasures) a collage from the same series as the album cover art.

I started recording and putting songs on Bandcamp under the name Indoor Condor starting in 2018. I had been in Asheville a couple of years and had been on a veritable creative hiatus during that time. Leaving Chicago meant leaving behind my two music-related projects–Grappling Snark and Mashed Potato Alligator—as the other members of each of those duos are Chicago-based guys. Remote collaborations are possible in theory, of course, but never really seemed like an option in these cases.

A couple years after the move, I was ready to start recording music again, and I had this idea about writing little songs–like jingle-length. So I started doing that, and leaning into the lo-fi recording aesthetic of some of my favorite bands and records, esp. the homemade recordings Lou Barlow has released under the Sebadoh/Sentridoh banner. With a few songs under my belt and a little encouragement, the songs started to get longer, but not too much longer. Not like a sprawling 3 minutes or anything, more like a Minutemen song or a Wire song, like a minute or 90 seconds. Songs with little hooks, but nothing so garish as a chorus—more like little poems set to music. There even started to be a band. Then Covid.

I went inactive again for a while, but as the Covid malaise began to dissipate, I was looking to get back to recording and to start performing. The Covid lockdown effectively killed the band that had started to form. So as I was thinking about what to do, it felt right to collect the recorded output of that era of the band. I felt like putting it on a record would help me bookend that time and that body of work so that I could figure out what to do next. So that’s what Candy Macabre is: a collection of material written and recorded in the year leading up to the Covid lockdown. (And if you’re curious there’s a good amount of pre-Candy Macabre Indoor Condor songs over on Bandcamp.)

Assembling/releasing the record and the various promotional stunts (like the mall pop-up shop and the giveaway guitar) helped me feel like I was ready to carry on. I started performing by myself, and I got to a place that felt durable, i.e., like I could do the band in a way that felt satisfying to me and that didn’t depend on anyone else. That’s a good place to be. I love to play with other people, but if other band members are a requirement, the project is fragile. People are busy. People move. Things fall apart.

In the past I had all these conditions and prerequisites in my mind that had to be in place for the band to be a going concern–like other performers or whatever. Putting out the album and playing by myself showed me that I can just do the thing. I started messing around with some backing tracks on a sampler and figuring out how to perform–and make it interesting–even if it’s just me.

Luckily, Matt came to see me doing one of these solo performances, and he was like, “you need a drummer.” He was right, and it’s been so much fun performing the songs with him. We play a bunch of songs off Candy Macabre, a couple covers, and a bunch of “new” songs, i.e., post-Candy Macabre songs.

And that’s where we are today. A year out from the album release, I feel really good about it and the effect it had on my creative output. I still have some copies of the limited edition pressing left if you want one but don’t have one.

Now I’m working on the next album. I’ve got 8 songs written/recorded, a total of about 13 and half minutes of material. My plan is to keep writing/recording until I get to about 25 minutes. Then, I’ll refine and sequence those songs and that will be the next record. I have album art figured out, a working title, and some ideas for interesting packaging for another limited-edition physical release. The tracks will be a mix of totally self-recorded/produced, some home-recorded and professionally mixed, and some full-on studio productions.

It feels good and right to be working on this, and I appreciate all of you who are paying attention.

Over on the other side of the paywall, I’m going to link to some early versions of tracks for the new album. Later this summer, I’m going to put out a finished track or two on the streamers as singles. I’ve also got even more to put on Bandcamp, and I’ll keep doing what I’ve done in the past: I’ll put first versions up on Bandcamp (kind of like demos), and then more complete versions will be on the album. So there’s lots on the horizon.

Thanks!!

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