Recorded: 2005
Lyrics
I'm gonna come out of the days when my mind was a chemical fire,,
and I spread the shards of a thousand wires,,
looking every night for that ritual jolt,,
Every omen and every curse was unknowingly my fault...
One can sit satisfied and dig that same old hole,,
Inebriated with self concern and no self control,,
It's up to you to decide if that pain is real,,
and stop the temptation to narrate how you feel...
I don't get the feeling that you care about yourself or getting anywhere,,
I am moving on with things to do,,
The things that matter to me just don't matter to you,,
You never taught me the things you said you would,,
I need to know more about this world that's good,,
You never taught me the things you said you would...
BackStory
...The group of songs on Criminal's Return that were recorded in '05 (From Now On, Thorns, Chemical Fire) were part of a studio-based record that never came out called "The Squanderer" that was intended to follow up "I want to live a peaceful life"...
"Decline of the West" was simultaneously being recorded at home and ended up being finished first... when it was submitted to Film Guerrero, who was HolySons' label at the time,, the label owner wanted me to go back and re-record the whole album in the studio to improve the sound quality... I didn't want to and couldn't really afford to... then the label folded suddenly and HolySons drifted for several years as it had done in the 90's... meanwhile,, odd PR-driven sensations like 'freak folk' reared their head and created several now-rich 'living legends' that often sound to me like they're still figuring out how to write their first batch of songs... those years helped cement familiar bitter feelings that were submerged into several songs and still tons that never came out as there was no machinery in place to do so...
...over that period I learned how to re-mix recordings in a style that could further the most druggy/surreal 4-track methods I'd used in the previous decade... this ended up being a positive outcome as records like Black Tar Prophecies and Decline of the West gained a lot of personality from translating those old handmade methods into new potentials using computer editing... believe it or not,, the next time 'Decline' was submitted to a US label,, they said it was actually not lo-fi enough!...
...there's still a full record of songs that never came out from those sessions... maybe with the birth of the Pamlico Sound Mailorder vinyl label I can get around to releasing "The Squanderer" and/or re-releasing "Staying True" for the first time on vinyl............. 10-4
