My mother told me at the end of last year that I "had no talent" for music, and that I should never sing in public lest I embarrass myself. So I decided right then and there that this year, I would learn how to play the guitar, I'd learn how to sing, and I'd write and release an album, come hell or high water.

Well, in the absence of either, for better or worse -- at least on these shores -- here it is.

There's this quote from Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray maybe, probably, that suddenly, I'm remembering now, where he reflects upon the relationship between the quality of an artist's life, and the quality of their work. Knowing Wilde, the actual passage is probably a bit more vain in its measures, but the gist of it, if I'm remembering correctly, is that the "greatness" of a poet is reflected in the lack of greatness in their existence, and vice versa.

A great poet, Wilde claims, is the most unpoetical creature; and instead, it is the lesser poet who is the greater being, who is capable of simply realising their poetry in living rather than writing, and who has no need for "great poetry" as an ersatz for an incomplete life. It's this fundamental contradiction that underlies the bitterness and frustration of every poetic effort at one point or another, I think -- that inherent, eternal solipsism that lies at the heart of poiesis as desire and substitute for something greater and more meaningful; coming into full, head-long fucking impact with the realisation that greatness is not something we can embody or manifest, but rather, something we must simply live. The artist who creates primarily in order to satisfy a present absence will never end up with anything more than the phantom ache of an absent presence. And there's a comfort and truth to be found in happy mediocrity, that no amount or degree of artistry or apparent revelation will ever be able to touch.

This album here, then, is an ugly, shitty, unpoetical work, about ugly, shitty, unpoetical things. There's no ambition or greatness to be found here, no grace or greater meaning: just a bunch of anxiety, and shame, and desperation, and resentment, and self-sabotage, and destructive ideation -- and a whole lot of off-key, off-rhythm bitching.

And yet, despite all that, for some odd reason, of all the things I've made in my life so far, funnily, I think this is the first one I've ever felt really, truly proud of. In a kinda ironic twist, it turns out that actually, maybe my mother was at least a little bit right after all, that maybe I really am just not cut out for "music" the way some other people are. But you know what? For the first time in my life, I think I found, in writing this album, something that I know I'm not good at -- and which I'm perfectly okay, hell, even content, with being not good at. For the first time in my life, I felt something unprecedented: a total emancipation from the expectation of greatness, and the unbridled honesty that kind of freedom affords.

This album is a chronological account of my reckoning with that newfound honesty, beginning in January of 2021 (well, technically the first song was written the month before, but that's neither here nor there), and ending in September, on my 24th birthday. Every month, I set out to write and record exactly one new song, about whatever dumb shit that was on my mind at the time, regardless of how pointless or petty or even mean-spirited it might seem. (You can click on each individual song for more information about their respective context. I've also included, in respective order of, and appended to the original tracklist, the first recordings of each song. Honestly, I personally prefer most of them to their final versions...)

And the thing is, as I worked on this album, I began to notice, slowly, month by month, that that pitch-black noise inside my head had begun to dissipate. The rage, the resentment, the regret... gradually, it started to feel like I no longer had any use for it, holding onto it. Every time I started to feel that pale shadow pass over me, every time I started to find myself staring off out the window and slipping into some dark pattern, dreaming up of different ways to die, or looking up the prices of high-capacity magazines online, I would just pick up my guitar instead and I'd write some shitty song, and by the time I was done, well, the shadow would be gone too. Moments like these, they would come, and then they would pass, and then they would come again, and then they would pass, and, day by day, that malevolence seemed to recede more and more, just a bit at a time. Seeing all that dumb shit written down... I got tired of my own thoughts. I got sick of my own feelings. I found within the depths of my loneliness, which had previously felt potent, maybe even profound, something deeply banal and pathetic instead. And for the first time, I made the choice to get better, instead of accepting that I would get worse.

As I've come to learn this year, the courage to do what you want is not the same as the courage to do what you can. If so, this album is my witness then to that realisation, and the choice I made: the residue of the ugliness of which I've chosen -- which I am choosing -- to let go. While I'm still far, far away from being a good person, let alone a great one, at the very least, I now know that I can be a better person than I was the day before, which for now, has to be enough. And if all that costs me right now is a bunch of shitty songs some people might cringe at, well, that's most certainly a price I'm willing to pay in exchange.

Take care. Hang in there.

Spencer