I recently uploaded the WP’s 2008 album Hard Feelings to our Bandcamp page.
I started recording this collection of music in 2005 at the Breakglass Studio. It was completed over the next few years in fits and starts whenever I could afford to go into the studio. It was a very fun, productive series of sessions. Jace and Dave had really stepped up their studio since the Enabler days and there was a lot of gear to work with. Our motto was “over the top.”
I initially intended it to be a series of EPs (starting with Lost Illusions which came out in ’06). And as much as I hate to use the past conditional, I probably should have. I started to get impatient with my label at the time and decided to release it as a full album, even though there are (at least) three distinct musical vibes going on that don’t always fit together.
There’s a kind of “soft rock” angle (heavily influenced by longtime WP cohort Steve Raegele)…
…a few tunes that were recorded live off the floor with the all-girl synth rock version of the WP, trying to capture our live sound at the time:
and a handful of tracks in the classic WP casio rock anthem style that we really took a lot of care to produce well, including audience faves like the title track, “Volunteers” and “Valentine” (featuring Feist), which remains the WP’s greatest hit to date for some mysterious reason.
At one point there was a fairly big American indie label that seemed to be interested in releasing it. A bunch of my friends were experiencing success at that time and I allowed myself to get a little cocky that the same might happen to me. I was setting myself up for a humbling and I got one, one that continues to this day.
But I don’t want to dwell on the failings of Hard Feelings because ultimately, I think it’s a good collection that has a lot of the WP’s best songs. As a bonus for this reissue, I threw in two tunes from Lost Illusions, long since unavailable elsewhere—“Soft Rocks” and “Creativity is Wonderful”—that happen to be some of my personal faves.
The album also has a really good package, designed by Todd Stewart and featuring original artwork by Dawn Boyd, Matt Collins, Julia Kennedy, Billy Mavreas and Joe Ollman, along with a bunch of jokes and puzzles. I was really going for a “post-CD” kind of experience, though we ended up pressing some CDs under pressure from the distributor (who since went bankrupt… but that’s a whole other story).
Whether you’re revisiting it or listening for the first time, I hope you enjoy it.