“Where we been?”
Since last we spoke—and what’s happening right now is us “speaking,” by the way—we have traveled far and wide to the strange lands of Philadelphia, Ithaca, and Alphabet City. In each place, we encountered new and eclectic beings, kind souls for whom we are grateful! We love New Colossus, Nublu, Milkboy and WVBR! We also endured TREACHERY in the form of mild logistical coordination.
Luckily, we had our wits about us for the most part—except for when we left a bag of merch at the venue at Cornell, which some very nice Ivy Leaguer will surely remit to us in the coming days before beginning a powerful and high-paying career in the political, financial, or technical sectors.
Unfortunately, the spiritual importance of these careers—and the tasks they demand—will be dwarfed by the awesome and noble duty one might feel in returning Thesaurus Rex’s merch.
UPCOMING SHOWS
We are playing in Lower Manhattan a Sofar Sounds show on April 2nd with some homies we met in Chicago. Ur MOM
We are playing in BROOKLYN (our home turf) at this very interesting Thrift Event on April 10th. Come shop and party.
Certainly the most important show of our life (the life of our band) approaches. WE ARE PLAYING BOWERY BALLROOM ON JULY 30TH. We are co-headlining with Um-Jennifer? with support from a secret special guest.
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW
Yet another Zoe Mead photograph, if you can possibly fathom it.
WUT NEXT?! (& meditations there on)
Mind your business!
But only if your business is garnering an in-depth knowledge of all things Thesaurus Rex™, which it is.
We are making an album! It will either be called:
The Immaculate Concept
Mr. Certainty and The Shadows of Doubt
Analog Analogue
The Phonograph Killed the Poetry Star
Even Greasterest Hits
or something else that will come to me in a moment of sublime weakness at 3AM while staring at the ceiling, muttering “title… title…” like a medieval monk waiting for God to finish his sentence.
Originally, it was just going to be a collection of songs.
Then we thought it would be funny to say we tried and failed to make a concept album.
We would do this by starting the album with a band theme song, as we did with the last album (which you can buy on vinyl at our extremely cool website, which is so cool I can keep my leftovers in there; fridge-style). But this time, the band theme song would be for a different band entirely: a high school rock band called Mr. Certainty and the Shadows of Doubt.
None of the rest of the songs would relate to that band or to each other, and then the last song would be an apology song explaining that it was going to make more sense, but now it doesn’t make sense, and oops, this was just kind of a regular Thesaurus Rex album after all.
We were very proud of ourselves for being so clever and stupid.
Then we started writing and recording the album over the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s. After several days of writing and collating which songs we’d like to record and develop for our silly little conceptless concept album, I had a shower realization.
I texted the group chat:
“This album is about following your dreams.”
This was alarming news to everyone involved.
In the following weeks, I came to realize that we had, in our attempt to make a concept album about failing to make a concept album, failed.
And in failing to fail to make a concept album, we had accidentally succeeded in making a concept album.
This is a process philosophers call “dialectics” and what normal people call “annoying and verbose”
With more thought, I realized it wasn’t just a concept album about following one’s dreams—it had the makings of a story. It had characters. It had a ten-year timeline. It had B plots. It had thematic bookends. It had emotional stakes and something resembling ‘meaning.’
It is now evolving into something between a play, a rock opera, and an epic poem. (i know, eyeroll)
It is an ambitious project about ambition. It is about being rendered obsolete by technology. It is about the strange process by which your life becomes your life, and not just something that is happening to you. It is about how occupations are often just that: occupation. They occupy your time. They fill hours.
This is not just a theme of the work but also an idea I’m trying to implement in my artistry as a whole, which brings me to Substack. Oh, sweet Substack.
There’s been a lot of debate and discussion as to whether or not ‘Short-form content’ is the future.
I think it’s clear that short-form is the present and future of advertising, but not art.
Advertising shrinks your time. The act of waiting for something to be done shrinks your time. The little clock on the YouTube ad is 5 seconds at a time of you wishing seconds of your life away. Life is short enough as it is.
Art does the opposite. Art expands the time we have here. It connects us intimately to something that profoundly proceeds and succeeds the ‘self’. This album, is fundamentally about how we spend our time, as is life I guess, if you want me to be all #deep about it. I would like to focus my creative energy on something that will outlive me and a ‘hook in the first 3 seconds of a 20 second video’ is simply not going to cut it.
There is also a song on the album called “Rat the Size of a Small Cat,” which is about a rat the size of a small cat. Fun Stuff.
Until next time,
Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff
Calvin
Hear me out here, though: what if we shrink ONLY the time between now and when this album hits our ears? Then we can expand our time with the music. Scientifically, this is fool-proof.
“Mr. Certainty and The Shadows of Doubt” is a killer name! But my favorite has to go to “The Immaculate Concept,” it’s just a name that sounds impressive but gives you exactly zero insights on what the album could be about, and also the album in its self is an immaculate concept✨