Some artists refuse to explain the motivations behind their work, insisting that once a song or a movie or a painting is released into the universe, it no longer belongs to the creator. When you hear a song, you experience that piece of music in an individualistic fashion; the work is bent and twisted and perceived through the lens of your own life experiences.

Luckily, I’m not an “artist.” I’m just a dude writing songs in his bedroom. Therefore, I’m breaking all the rules. This commentary will speak plainly about the writing process of Invaders and the specific life experiences that inspired each track. I’m going to leave out the boring producer stuff like which microphones I used and which compression settings I prefer and all that. This commentary isn’t really about how this record was made. It’s more about why this record was made.

If that’s something you can get behind, then hey, let’s take a journey, shall we? Let’s pack our whips, throw on a leather jacket and fedora, hop into a dusty Jeep, and floor it straight into Makinganalbumville. But beware: it’s a scary, terrifying place full of crippling self-doubt, exposed insecurities, and embarrassing vulnerabilities. Lucky for you, however, your guide knows a few places in town where the sun still shines. All aboard!


[click for lyrics]
zombie |ˈzämbē|
noun
• informal a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings.

One of my favorite horror flicks is George A Romero’s classic 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. The plot: recently dead humans mindlessly walk the Earth, trapped in a never-ending, unquenchable search for flesh and brains. And where do their desires lead them? To a shopping mall, of course. Once there, they bash through windows and break down doors in an attempt to fill their undead souls with something, anything to satisfy their cravings. And after they trap you and dine on your skin? They lumber off looking for more meat. More blood. More, more, more. It’s never enough.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or pretentious literary major) to connect the dots and understand that Romero was metaphorically using zombies to critique rampant, unchecked consumerism and social decadence. By definition, zombies do not make choices for themselves. They’re driven by an urge to consume without the ability to reflect on their feelings and understand why. They see blood and they drink it. They hear a gunshot and walk towards it. Zombies mindlessly follow the herd and use their vast numbers and relentless will to devour living flesh to remake the world in their own ghoulish, dreadful image.

With that said, take a look around you. Go ahead. No, really. Look up and examine your surroundings. Do you see people living without passion? Without purpose? Lost in a sea of crippling self-doubt, dressing the way magazines tell them to dress and acting like characters from The Hills? Or maybe you’re stuck in a cubicle, peeking over the top of your cage to stare at your co-workers existing in a state of perpetual rationalization, human rats that constantly update their reasons for letting their dreams die and their passions to wither, only to be fool themselves into thinking that Excel spreadsheet formulas and American Idol results shows are the true keys to happiness.

Okay, I’ll admit that it’s a clichéd and hackneyed worldview to postulate that everyone in a tie doesn’t live life to the fullest. Real life isn’t that obvious. What should be obvious, however, is that it doesn’t matter where you work, where you go to school, or how much money you have: as Henry David Thoreau once said, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

And that’s what Zombies Everywhere is about. The idea that you are surrounded on all sides by forces that pressure you to compromise your personal beliefs for the desire to fit the mold of the status quo, to make money, or to meet the unrealistic expectations of people that don’t really care about you. Zombies don’t want you to succeed because they have already failed. They gave up on their dreams years ago, and can’t possibly bear the thought that someone else might accomplish more than they have.

But don’t let anyone stop you. Ask questions. Wear the clothes you want to wear. Listen to the music you like. Don’t get a tattoo of a werewolf biting a dolphin if you don’t think it looks cool. Don’t feel pressured to smoke, drink, have sex, cheat on your taxes, kill your landlord, or pretend that you liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine if you think they completely ruined Gambit.

The point is: don’t let anyone define for you what is or isn’t cool. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do. You’re not a zombie. You can think for yourself, you have an open mind and a willingness to learn and grow, and you can do anything you want to, thank you very much.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there. Raise your hand. Write poetry. Start a charity to help homeless people, or learn how to speak French, or put together a punk band. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I didn’t have to make money?” and find a way to do a little of that every day. In short, listen to the Jiminy Cricket inside yourself and it’s impossible to do wrong.

And one more thing: if you believe everything I’m saying, you’re a zombie of the worst kind. Oh, the irony.



[click for lyrics]
In defense of ditching his wife to marry his own adopted daughter, Woody Allen famously stated, “the heart wants what the heart wants.” That was Allen’s pithy way of saying that love is a divine force impossible to control or contain. Whether you categorize it as a feeling, an emotion, a chemical reaction, a gift from God, or an instinctual response designed by evolution to continue the propagation of the species, love is a beast in charge of its own destiny, laying to waste rational thought and sensible decision making by sparking wars, provoking jealousy, and inspiring the greatest works of art in human history.

In short, it’s kinda responsible for everything.

Life and love are both crushingly beautiful, and ugly, and awe-inspiring, and unorganized. The Earth spins around the Sun, babies slide out of vaginas, old people slide into graves, you get older, you settle into a job you hate because you didn't have the money, or worse, the guts to follow your dreams, you lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling, wondering if there could be just one person out there waiting to love you, to hold you, to look at you and see you for who you really are, to make you feel like you're the most important person in the world and that you deserve love. But you can't possibly believe that anyone could love you if they got to know the real you.

You know that Haddaway song “What Is Love?” Well, he had no idea what love was all about when he first sang that song, and I’d be willing to bet that he isn’t any closer to an answer today. Trying to define love is like trying to hold a wet fish: the damn thing manages to slip away no matter how firm a grasp you have on it.

But maybe that’s because we’ve been looking at love from the wrong angle. Maybe true love isn’t a collection of warm, fuzzy feelings. Perhaps true love is a choice. A choice to stay with your partner after the fairy tale beginning. After the excitement of stepping into a strange girl’s room for the first time is gone. After sending flowers and cute cards is replaced by jumping up to fart on your boyfriend’s face as he watches hockey. After sleeping in until noon is replaced with getting up early to take the kids to school. Maybe it’s a choice you make after looking at your girlfriend as she falls asleep next to you while watching The Breakfast Club, only to suddenly realize that there has never been a more perfect person for you, someone that has seen all sides of your personality without judging you, someone who has seen your faults and imperfections but still chooses to be with you regardless of the crazy ups and downs you’ve been through together.

Yeah, maybe that’s what love is. A choice.

But what do I know? My shirt is covered in Doritos crumbs, I have three WarCraft characters at Level 80, and I haven’t spoken to a female since the waitress at Denny’s asked, “do you need change?” after I ate pancakes and sausage five months ago.

Sigh.


[click for lyrics]
Spiked green Mohawk. Black boots. Leather jacket with a Misfits patch safety-pinned to the back. Facial piercings. Ripped black jeans. Pawnshop guitar. Vintage combo amp. Three chords. Notebooks full of clichéd lyrics ambiguously addressing corrupt governments, zero tolerance for authority figures, and how seriously fucking stupid you are for following trends and conforming to society’s vision of what’s “acceptable.”

Is this the portrait of a rebel? A modern-day, punk rock Johnny Cash, stepping out of a black Cadillac parked on a dusty road with an acoustic guitar and a voice ready to change the world?

Nope. This ain’t that. This is the portrait of a 14-year-old Paul McGuire after a trip to Hot Topic and Guitar Center.

Back then, I thought that dressing the way Johnny Rotten did in the 70’s made me cool. I thought it made me different. Interesting. And if you, the principal, or the cashier at Burger King had a problem with how I dressed or the music I listened to, then you could fuck off and die. I was King Of The Hill, baby. Top of the heap. And if you didn’t realize this, then you were a shithead and a sellout, dude.

Only years later did I realize something very, very important:

Copying someone else’s vision of non-conformity is the ultimate act of conformity.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?

The general definition of conformity is to “comply with rules, standards, or laws,” or “to behave according to socially acceptable conventions or standards.” People need to be accepted into a group in order to feel validated. Being a punk is no different. Sure, punks don’t wear Christmas sweaters, or loafers, or khaki shorts, but don’t think for a second that they don’t have their own restrictive uniform. In order to fit in, in order to be “accepted” into the sub-culture, you had to wear what they wore, act how they acted. And if you didn’t fit the mold, you simply weren’t accepted, that’s all. Sometimes, this was done with a kick from a steel-toed boot to the head. Other times, it was done by loudly proclaiming what a “poser” you were, and how much you had no idea what “punk is all about.”

And that’s where the Snake Oil comes in.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with selling Snake Oil, as long as you advertise that you’re selling Snake Oil. Selling Snake Oil and calling it Pepsi is wrong both technically and ethically. And this is what bugs me about Hot Topic Punks. It’s okay to dress like Johnny Rotten, but please, for the love of all creatures big and small, have the self-awareness to realize and acknowledge that you’re just sporting a recycled fashion that you find aesthetically pleasing. It doesn’t make you interesting. It doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t make you better than the captain of the volleyball team, the Grateful Dead obsessed hippy, or the math genius. It just makes you you. Try not to forget that it’s your heart that makes you unique, not your mohawk.

We’re all different. And yet, paradoxically, that’s what makes us all the same. So please, after you strap on your steel-toed boots, go ask that dude with the tape between his glasses and the pocket protector to get some ice cream with you. You might find that you have a lot in common after all.


[click for lyrics]
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood, and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.”

King said this during a sermon in 1963, and therefore was not referencing the explosion of Internet technology and social networking that would overtake the world thirty-five years later, but rather, he was referring to the automation of factory jobs in the manufacturing industry and the frightening advances in technological warfare. Through the lens of mid-60’s politics and social upheaval, King theorized that while technology would certainly promote closer, tighter global relationships and increased knowledge sharing, he also feared that we did not posses the much-needed restraint and temperament required to responsibly use such powerful instruments for, well, the good of all mankind.

But enough of the fluffy stuff, I’ll just say it plainly: the human-robot love story illustrated in the lyrics of this song is a metaphor for society’s torrid love affair with technology.

Case in point: how are you reading this commentary right now? On your desktop computer? On your laptop in a coffee shop, surrounded by hipsters, wannabe poets, and soccer moms? On your phone while you sit in the passenger seat of your boyfriend’s Jeep while he drives you to the theatre to watch Star Trek for the sixth time? I highly doubt any of you are reading this on paper, but even if you were, that means you downloaded it off the Internet, pressed Print, and a laser shot black ink across a dead tree and magically created a physical copy for you to carry around in your pocket.

Our lives are, for better or for worse, 100% reliant on technology. And with every day that passes, the electronic bits that rule our lives become larger, and stronger, and smarter. And yet, perhaps strangely, it’s all very normal, isn’t it? Today, stepping foot on an airplane, blasting through the air at 500MPH, and landing somewhere six thousand miles away in under eleven hours is no big deal, but one hundred years ago you would have been burned at the stake for even suggesting such witchcraft was even remotely possible.

Another case in point: I had no idea how fast airplanes flew, but I typed my question into a little box and 0.2 seconds later I was given the answer. All very routine, all very normal.

Every new generation is exposed to a larger amount of tech convenience, and suddenly it’s no big deal that the little plastic box in your hand can shoot a signal into outer space, bounce off a satellite, and careen back into Earth’s atmosphere and into the little plastic box in your friend’s hand five feet away from you, just so you can say “yo” without moving your mouth. When a new technological wonder gadget is introduced to modern society, it makes a momentary innovative splash, then becomes just another thing we take for granted. A given. Miracles as a part of everyday life, that’s all.

In Charlie Chaplin’s classic film The Great Dictator, the main character pleads, “Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life would be violent, and all will be lost."

The good news? Both King and Chaplin’s passages have one thing in common: hope. Hope that our good-natured, yet still cavemen-like minds can find a way to turn this complex, digital neighborhood into a brotherhood. And maybe, just maybe, with a little goodwill and scientific awareness, the global community will slow the production of bombs that can vaporize our planet, make cars that won’t make every penguin homeless, and stop being complete shitheads while hiding behind anonymity on a Twilight message board. Okay, I’ll take responsibility for the last one on the list. Please forgive.

But really, we’re gonna have to find a way to make this technology thing work, because, you know, we’re kinda stuck with this stuff. Or, to put it another way:

Once you go cyborg you don’t go back.


[click for lyrics]
When my insecurities rear their ugly head (which happens often), and my ability to write or make creative decisions has been poisoned by self-doubt, I try to remember something that Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.”

And that’s what this song is about: the struggle between the goals you want to accomplish, and the impossible pressure you subject yourself to by turning the proverbial microscope inward. Intense over-analysis and over-thinking are my worst enemies, and more often than not both qualities are the reason why my projects and/or relationships fail. I simply can’t meet a deadline and/or allow my heart to make decisions, because I’m too busy dissecting every move and allowing my head and “rational thinking” to get in the way. I’m sorta like Spock, except, you know, without the brilliant intellect, cool haircut, and irresistible geeky charm.


[click for lyrics]
I have an addiction: I like to people watch. It’s taking over my life, but I can’t help it. Like David Bowie’s humanoid character in The Man Who Fell To Earth, I frequently find myself sitting on a park bench, or in the back of a restaurant, or waiting in line at a grocery store observing the people around me and wondering what their motivations are, who they love, what secrets they’re keeping, how they’re going to die, and where they’re going to end up.

I over-analyze everything. And I mean everything. Like right now, I’m even analyzing what you, the potential reader, is going to think about my confession that I over analyze every detail. And now I’m thinking about how pretentious, and self-absorbed, and silly it sounds when I admit that I’m analyzing the sentences I’m writing about my shockingly uncontrollable ability to not analyze things. And what’s the point of writing all this down, when in one hundred years every single person I know is going to be dead and nothing anyone does really matters?

Whew. Confusing, right? Paralysis by analysis. That’s what I have. It’s a horrible disease, really. But at least you know I’ll never kill anyone, because it would take me at least seventeen years to choose which weapon to use. I’d be an immobile sack of skin hooked to an oxygen tank and dying of heart disease in an old folks home eighty years from now before I even pick a victim. The Zodiac Killer I am not.

With that said, the main, crushing side effect of over-thinking everything is this: I simply cannot live in the moment. At all times, I’m either thinking about the past, trying to figure out where things went horribly wrong, or I’m working to move all my pieces perfectly in place in order to influence and predict the future. This leaves very little time for me to smell the roses, if you will.

Which brings us to the theme of this song: over-analyzing your life effectively stops you from living it.

And yet, even after coming to this realization, I don’t know what to change in order to stop feeling this way. I mean, I can’t tell myself to stop thinking. It’s not a switch you can turn off, where all of the sudden you’re, like, totally interested in the 49ers versus Patriots football game and your only worries are if you have enough nachos and beer to last four quarters. It doesn’t work that way. Or does it? Strangely, I have the strongest urge for nachos. I’ll have to continue my analysis after a serious trip to Taco Bell.


[click for lyrics]
Sometimes a song has a mind of it’s own, and the idea that motivated you to write the tune in the first place disappears, only to be replaced by a different kind of monster altogether.

Originally, this song was intended to be a soft, tender piano ballad. I had written the piano chords and progressions very early in the writing process, and even recorded a slowed-down, mellow version of the song with just vocals and piano. I was really happy with the way the track turned out, but as I continued to write songs for the rest of the record, I kept coming back to this tune and saying (as I always do, my biggest weakness), what if I added guitar? And bass? And drums? And a lot more keyboards? And sped the whole thing up? Suddenly, the song transformed from being a vulnerable piano track and into an upbeat rock song.

A tough decision needed to be made. Which version was better suited for the record? I couldn’t choose. I liked both for different reasons. Eventually, when I listened back to the album as a whole, it made sense to use the rock version on the album, and perhaps use the piano version as a B-side somewhere down the line. In the end, Aaron replaced my verse beat with a way-cooler kick/snare pattern, and Geoff added some Journey-style solo notes over the break, and everything turned out fine.

Lyrically, this song was written as a letter to myself. That said, the meaning of the title is obvious: my stubborn, silly inability to break down the unnecessary, dramatic walls I’ve built to protect myself only hurt me in the end. I went through a streak where I told myself that I didn’t need love; that I didn’t need someone else to validate my worth in order to feel important. I told myself that these types of relationships only held me back from achieving my goals and being the person I wanted to be.

But I wasn’t being honest.

Fact is, the people in your life and the relationships you’ve created just might be the only things that really matter. Your mother holding your hand as you take your first steps, the night you asked Samantha Jenkins to prom, the surprise birthday party you threw for Dave, who was so shocked he vomited on Becky’s new dress: these are moments you’ve shared with the people you love and care about. These are the moments you remember. These are the people you feel connected to, the people you’ve learned from, and the people you don’t want to live without. And while sometimes (okay, most times) love can be hard, it’s worth every bruise and bloody nose. Relationships aren’t meant to confine and restrict, they’re meant to liberate the heart and allow it to fly to unseen heights.

You say you don’t agree with me? That’s fine. But hey, you’re not fooling anyone (except yourself).


[click for lyrics]
I was failing the seventh grade. I hated all my classmates, my teachers, and the kids that lived on my block. In other words, I was your typical white kid from the suburbs: utterly self-centered with absolutely zero perspective. I wanted to switch schools. I wanted to move to a different neighborhood. And above all, I wanted the chance to start over again and make a new life for myself.

Sounds pretty dramatic for a kid in seventh grade, doesn’t it? The way I was acting, you’d think that every time I lost a round of Street Fighter, the pain I felt was the equivalent of a tank crushing an infant in Nigeria. I was, hands-down, the biggest Drama Queen on the block. After a particularly horrific day at school, where kids teased me for having a zit on the side of my nose (which, in my head, was the equivalent pain of a Russian traitor having all four limbs sawed off and shoved in a blender by the KGB), I decided to ditch school and head to the beach. I needed to get away from the cliques, the cool kids that refused to acknowledge I existed, and the judgmental teachers that viewed me as a thorn in their side for “asking too many questions,” and “not showering for weeks and refusing to wear deodorant.” The ocean seemed like the perfect place to go and forget my troubles.

It took me twenty minutes to walk to the beach, and when I got there, I saw something I’ll never forget.

Spray painted on the wall directly in front of me, in huge, Hollywood Hills style white letters, was the following phrase: IF YOU DONT LIVE HERE DONT SURF HERE. Just like that, scrawled in all capital letters with zero punctuation. And as the sun set behind me in a blazing sea of reds, and oranges, and yellows, I learned a lesson that Brer Rabbit learned one hundred years before I did:

You can’t run from trouble, kid, there ain’t no place that far.

Ignorance exists everywhere. Close-minded, cruel people aren’t just found in your seventh grade Science class, they’re found on the local police force, waiting tables at Denny’s, and yes, even wearing flip-flops at your local beach. While humans are the most advanced, evolutionary animal alive, there’s a part of our brain that’s stuck 300,000 years in the primitive past, when cavemen traveled as nomadic packs and lived in tribes. In those days, stumbling upon a group of cavemen in a different tribe meant that you were going to spend the rest of your afternoon swinging your club at a hairy, grunting face in a violent grab for territory, food, and shelter. And while those days are long gone, the racism, bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia that were a very real part of everyday Neanderthal life are as prevalent as ever.

And that’s what this song is about: feeling lost in a world full of unwelcoming cliques that require you to compromise your beliefs in order to be accepted.


[click for lyrics]
To paraphrase Caden Cotard in Synecdoche, NY, “there are billions of people in the world, and none of them is an extra. They’re all leads in their own stories.”

Using theatre as a metaphor for real-life was most likely already cliché when Shakespeare wrote his famous “All The World’s A Stage” bit in As You Like It, but that doesn’t make me any less interested in viewing the pressures of society through the lens of the entertainment world in order to examine how the desire to become popular is a universal attraction that spans every stage of life, from the first years of school to your high-paying job in corporate America.

Similar to If You Don’t Live Here, Don’t Surf Here, the underlying theme of The Horror Show is: don’t change or compromise who you are or what you believe in order to please someone else. That can only lead to disaster, and in the end, you will only have yourself to blame.

But hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m aware that over the course of your life, you’ll certainly change your opinions, your beliefs, and your favorite brand of cereal (mine used to be Rice Chex, now it’s Wheaties. Never been a big sugar-cereal guy). But the key here is to not feel pressured by someone else’s expectations of what they imagine you should be. Easier said than done, right? I mean, it’s easy to spout vague, ambiguous advice on paper, but how do you apply these ideas to everyday life?

Easy answer: you’re gonna have to get burned.

Listening to your Dad lecture you about the dangers of fire is one thing, but placing your fingers over the flame is quite another. Once your hand feels the scorching pain of becoming a Chicken McNugget, you’ll never forget that direct contact with flickering waves of orange and red is to be avoided at all costs.

It’s inevitable: you’re going to make a few decisions that your heart doesn’t agree with. Okay, more than a few. You might be convinced to help your friends hotwire a car because they couldn’t find someone to drive them to Donut Time after they smoked six pounds of weed, you might tease Jody Meyers about her weight because everyone else was doing it, and you might steal money out of the cash register during your lunch break at Bloomingdale’s because it was, like, a totally victimless crime.

My point is: you’re going to do a couple things that, upon reflection, you regret. You’re going to look back and ask yourself why did I do those things? And, through a little (okay, a lot) of trial and error, you’ll see that mistakes are necessary in order to grow. You need to experience the pains of searching everywhere outside yourself in order to realize that the answers were inside you the entire time. In other words, you need to have your own personal Horror Show. Probably more than one.

And that’s the only way you’ll realize that, as the recurring theme of this record suggests, It’s Okay To Be Yourself.

Or, maybe you’ll join the Trenchcoat Mafia and shoot up your school. It’s kinda 50/50.


[click for lyrics]
Thematically, this song is the sequel to The League Of Tomorrow’s Sometimes When You Lose, You Win, which is plainly referenced in the first line of the song’s lyrics. Traveling back to 2007, Sometimes perfectly captured how I felt about chasing my silly dream to create music regardless of how many people didn’t believe in me or how many times I was rejected. I didn’t care if no one bought my album (they didn’t). I didn’t care if a single magazine or website reviewed my record (they didn’t). And I didn’t care if no one else wanted to play the music I was writing (they didn’t, except Ray, God bless his soul). The principal message of the song was: blaze your own path. Follow your heart. Make mistakes. Get punched in the face for standing up for what you believe in. It’s all good. Because, you know, sometimes when you lose, you win.

Inspiring? Maybe. But hold on, isn’t that a little naïve? If it’s true that sometimes when you lose, you win, doesn’t the opposite also have to be true? Don’t you have to at least acknowledge that sometimes when you lose…you lose?

It certainly seems that way. Before I wrote this record, things weren’t going very well in Paulville. I had written two albums that weren’t well-received by any stretch of the imagination, I was homeless, had absolutely zero money, and Karate High School was without a label and no one in the industry seemed to care. Where I come from, this is what’s known as a “Wake Up Call.” As I continued to analyze every choice I’d made, every bad song I’d written, every time I zigged when I should have zagged, I splashed some water on my face, looked at myself in the mirror, and came to one final, soul-draining realization: failure is officially an option, dude.

And this is where you, as an artist, make a choice. You either A) give up, ask your mom if you can move back into your old bedroom, and re-apply for your old job as Head Burger Flipper at Mickey D’s, or B) realize that music is the only thing that’s ever made sense to you, and continue to create songs and express yourself artistically because that is what you were meant to do, regardless of how many people try to tear you down and tell you that you’re not good enough.

If you find yourself in this position one day, I hope you have the courage to choose the second option. It’s the only way your soul will ever feel satisfied; the only way your heart can channel it’s truth into something that will live on long after you’re dead and gone.

In short, I have discovered that both are true: sometimes when you lose, you win, and yes, sometimes when you lose, you lose. Just don’t forget one important thing: it’s you that gets to decide.


[click for lyrics]
This is the only song where I’ll allow your imagination to provide your own personal meaning. It’s the most intimate thing I’ve written, and quite frankly, I don’t feel comfortable or currently possess the energy to provide the real-life details behind the words. I can’t sing this song or listen to the track without shriveling into a huge, disgusting baby, and the last thing you need right now is yet another solipsistic, self-pitying rant about what it means to the fast-running hamster on the treadmill inside my skull. I will say, however, that I intentionally kept this track bare, sparse, and vulnerable. Hopefully you can understand why.

Thank for you reading this Album Commentary. Your Friend,

Paul J. McGuire

Thank you for wasting seven hours of your life by reading this album commentary. If you'd like to waste even more time, check out even more nonsense by visiting PaulMcGuireRocks.com, and check me out on Twitter.