In late August I booked a mastering date for a set of songs which were written and recorded back in 2014. While the music was completed three and a half years ago, the vocals, with the exception of one song, were left unfinished.
I’ve tried several times to write out why the summer of 2014 was the hardest I’ve ever had, but outside the context of a song it strikes me as self indulgent and I’ve put it behind me. I’ll summarize by saying: Things seemed very dark and I’m very grateful to the people in my life who, knowingly and unknowingly, helped me get through it.
Writing and working on music was the only thing I was seemingly able to do during that period of time. I didn’t go out. I didn’t leave the house except for work and the studio. Something about having the music to focus on enabled me to be around other people while there.
As time went on, I found it harder and harder to revisit those songs. I changed lyrics endlessly. More time would go by. I joined a band and played a bunch of shows. I helped out more at the studio. I wrote for a local music publication. I’d re-mix the instrumental versions of the songs again and again and then not revisit them for months. I agreed to help open a new recording studio and dove into a months long construction process. I’d take on freelance scoring gigs for short films and web videos. I stayed busy.
Every time I started a new project, though, I’d have this creeping sense of guilt about what I didn’t finish. So, at the end of August 2018, I set a mastering date in the hopes that a deadline would help me finish the songs and get this thing off my back.
And on the first night, when I sat down to work, I realized something: All of the guilt —all of the weight — that I’d attributed to the songs had little, if anything, to do with the songs themselves. They’d come to represent everything that came before them. A peripheral sonic filter of things just out of view but never quite gone.
I made a decision to release the finished song, only revisit the others if I chose to, and then I wrote ten new songs over four days. I’m not sure why that realization had the effect that it did, or why a concept so simple had evaded my understanding for as long as it did. What I do know is that it felt like I had been sitting in a dark room, having completely forgotten my surroundings, and someone finally turned the lights back on.
Tar éis is a collection of some of those new songs and that one finished track from 2014 (“Stick Around”). The others, if I ever revisit them, may find their way onto future releases. They may not.
While I’m grateful for both the outlet and the experience of writing every note of those older songs which are not included, what I’ve found is… while you can’t change the past, you get to choose what you take with you. Everything after.
-N