Dopamines/Till Plains Split

Our second release came out in fall 2008, just over a year after the We Neither EP. In that time period, we attempted to book a tour that ended up falling through. Also, at this point, our friends The Dopamines had released their first album on It's Alive Records, based out of California. At some point, the idea for this split came up, and very thankfully, It's Alive expressed interest in putting it out. I can never thank Adam and Jenna Ali enough for doing so, seeing as how we were a total risk, while The Dopamines were getting pretty great receptions across the board.

Over the course of a few summer days, we knocked out our half of this split. Jake Tippey recorded us again, but this time we did all of the recording in the Dopamines practice space, which was located in a building called The Good Stuff in the Northside part of Cincinnati. The Good Stuff is a store that sells furniture and other knick-knacks, but also rents out two floors worth of practice spaces to local bands. Since then, I think we've practiced in about three different spaces in that same building. It was a very great time- Casey and I got terrible snacks (including mustard covered Vienna sausages) from the local convenience store, our vocal booth consisted of screaming into a carpet-covered corner, and I managed to read most of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential when I wasn't falling asleep. Meanwhile, around the same time, The Dopamines were tracking demos for what would become the Soap And Lampshades EP, which is easily one of the best things they've ever done.

Jon Lewis, guitarist/singer extraordinaire of The Dopamines did the mailbox man artwork, and the character would later become sort of a mascot of theirs, appearing all over the artwork of their newest album Expect The Worst, in addition to a shirt or two. The split got reviewed by a bunch of different websites and publications. Maximum Rock 'N Roll liked our half. Razorcake shat on us. It also came out on like half a dozen different colors of vinyl- I don't think I even have all of them. Either way, the whole process was one of the most thrilling things to happen to me as a musician to that point. Apparently this is out of print now, and we're nearly out of copies of it.

The Songs:

Interior - Before Till Plains started, Casey and I knew we wanted to start another band together after Forest Fire fell apart. When I was in Boston, I made some absolutely terrible, drumless, instrumental demos on a laptop under the band name Dolphin. "Interior" was one of these songs, although in pathetically worse form. It repeated itself like a million times and just dragged. The chorus was originally the verse, and the whole thing was just a mess. I wrote the lyrics in my History of American Music class up in Boston one day. The guitar parts in the verse were jokingly called the "after school special" parts, because of how egregiously poppy they are. I think there might even be some old setlists somewhere where this song was listed as "After School Special," due to how bad we were at naming songs and just assigning codewords to things temporarily. Also, it is not fun to play bass as fast as I did in the beginning of this song.

V1
Realization, won't you please stop punching me in the stomach?
You leave bruises in the shapes of continents, and I can barely move from prone positions in the morning
Laying in my bed all day not moving,
Reading volumes that my friends rejected a long time ago.

Chorus:
And when we sing together do we sing: "Leaving this town, the dust on the ground- don't move so far, my interest in you has not gone down"?

V2
You're flagrant now like you were caring then
Spinning in circles in my living room
With your eyes shut tight and a can of red paint
Dousing the couch and the cat and the blinds
Scared of confrontation I say to myself
Scared of confrontation I say to myself
I'm not a big fan of your remodeling job, but I'm not about to call your boss.

Bitter Innards - Got the name for this song from an episode of the Japanese version of Iron Chef. The secret ingredient that episode was a rare kind of fish that was known for its, yep, "bitter innards." That phrase stuck in my head, and boom. We haven't really played this song in a while, which is something I'd like to change. When we sent the song to It's Alive, Adam thought there was a glitch in the recording when it was really just the weird time signature thing at the beginning. The chorus is a tip of the hat to the Copyrights song "Shit's Fucked," which comes from their excellent 2008 album Learn The Hard Way.

V1
Woah, got a lot of venom tonight x2
This tension has come to a head
There's no chance for simmering.
Just boiling over, inconvenience, nothing out of the ordinary

Chorus:
And when I couldn't give a fuck, you couldn't give a shit
Now all we're left with are these dirty words for each other.

V2:
Woah, got a lot of venom tonight x2
And we sat there staring, interacting- like a scene from a movie that we didn't understand
but we pretended to anyway

Chorus

NO WE DON'T HAVE NOTHIN' LEFT
Woah, got a lot of venom tonight.

We Neither

One of the objectives of this blog, in addition to posting information about upcoming shows and things we're doing, is to keep an archive of stuff we've already done. A diary of sorts, that includes lyrics and other information about the recording, since we're too cheap to ever print the lyrics on the inserts ourselves (whoops). What better place to start than our first release? Incidentally, you can download it for free RIGHT HERE.

The four songs on We Neither were written in the span of about two non-consecutive days in August 2007. Some of the lyrics were written just prior to recording, and some of the vocal melodies were written in the booth. I'd like to think it manages to capture some of that frantic energy and "holy shit what the fuck are we doing? I didn't even know Joe could play guitar" spirit we had at the time. Basically, Till Plains started and had this recorded within a two week span before Casey and I had to go back to college. We were also just a three piece at this point- no Peyton yet. The EP was recorded in Joe's basement by the wonderful Jake Tippey, who has handled all of our recordings since.

After recording this thing, we didn't see each other for about two months, until the day we practiced before the EP release show, which was also our first live show ever. It went down near the end of November at The Orange Cat, the former house venue run by Pinstripes bassist and good friend Chris Grannen. Before the show, we sat in Casey's parents' basement with Jake and Anastassia Bowers, folding copy after copy after copy of the Kinkos-made artwork, burning CD-Rs, and putting them into sleeves. This is a process we would repeat over and over again whenever we ran out of these things. That night, we played the entire EP, and maybe one other song that's slipping my mind. This is what we looked like at the time:


The Songs:

Full Gulp Pulls - This song's lyrics were inspired by a series of nights I spent at a place called Robot House down in Clifton, near the University of Cincinnati, during the summer of 2007. Some of it is fictional, other parts of are exaggerated versions of things that actually happened: like my friend Adam's ultra trebley computer speakers, people zoning out while watching tv, getting really drunk- stuff like that. Joe sings the verses because the bass part I wrote was too hard. The line "defiant like a child denying the sun" was originally "defiant like a child in a tree denying the sun," but Joe, Jake, and Casey made fun of me so much for it that I got pissed and changed it. In retrospect, they were all completely right, so thanks guys.

V1:
Speakers up, gain shot, all treble and no bass
Eight hard drinks like four punches to the face
Leaving zombies on the couch absorbing waves like cathode flowers
With yesterday's fashion expired by two hours.

Chorus:
Waking me up is a must
Another morning with the right side of my face covered in rust
I wouldn't climb down when you asked me to
Defiant like a child denying the sun

V2:
Lurch, crawl, make some attempt at love
You make mistakes, you make mistakes, of this I'm sure.
A different area code won't protect you from their lies
Keep on telling yourself that you're admirable.
Yeah, you're admirable.

I Stand For Killer Nosegrinds - The first song that Joe and I wrote at our first practice together. The verses are WAY Lawrence Armsy, sound-wise. This song also marks the first appearance of my downright fetish with bass chords, although I could barely play that chorus whenever we played it live. Not sure how I feel about the lyrics to this one anymore- seeing as how they're just kind of about general shit-talkers- not a problem I really had much of, but a more than reliable well for lyrical material.

Gather all your friends and toss your daggers in the crowd
Maybe some will stick, some will get caught in the ground
With handles up we all will trip and fall down on the floor
Until you taste that dirt yourself, all you want is more
Put down all your silly traps, your games, and your charades
Impudent children, you don't know what they're for.

Was your past marred by some unforeseeable event or force?
Spitting battery acid will only leave you sore, with holes in your teeth and drops down your spine.
We could sit and talk, put records on and drown out all thethings that we're not brave enough to say
Without chords and drums smashing away behind us, don't mind us.
We're no important than you or the problems that you have.

How much harder do we have to yell before we convince you there's conviction?
Have we met our quota for inspirational statements?
When can we some result?
Some sort of turnaround?

Older Foxes - As of now, the only song from this EP that we still play today. The intro/verses were my warped attempt at writing something I could see Ted Leo writing, but yeah, they sound nothing like that. I was depressed about a specific person leaving for college, and the chorus is a reflection of the drive home we took after seeing Superbad at some far away movie theater. On a much lighter note, there's a Star Wars reference in the second verse. Although, if I was going for accuracy, I should of said "part one of a series that was supposed to end with six." This is also the first time I actually tried singing on a song as opposed to trying to hold a tune while shouting. This led to some absolutely terrible takes where I tried some Springsteen-like vocal affectations on the chorus. So, so bad. Made everybody besides Jake leave the basement when we did vocals for this one. Speaking of which, Jake makes his first vocal cameo on this song's bridge.

V1:
You've let me perforate my lungs.
I guess that's partially my fault though.
Nothing else put these cigs on my lips
Except for anxiety, nervousness and doubt.
I'm running slow, like older foxes fleeing the snow.

Chorus:
Please don't take me back to the town where the lights are brighter,
I'll just turn my head and hope they all burn out at once.
Hoping for some freak accident that will keep you driving.

V2:
I tend to blow situations out of proportion.
I know you'll be around in a couple of months.
Maybe at a party or some social event.
Maybe pretending not to be seen.
I'm running slow, like part four of a series that was supposed to end with three.

Chorus

Bridge:
Roads run like veins down the arms of our home
And we're like one small ant.
Roads run like veins down the arms of our home
And that ant is about to be smashed.

Polysyllabic - The black sheep of Till Plains songs, and the poppiest thing we've ever done. All I wanted to do was write a bass line that sounded like The Smiths. I loved this song, but it wasn't something we could all agree on, so it got scrapped from the setlists pretty early on. Whenever I suggest playing it, everyone else looks at me like I just shat my pants. Peep the ridiculously multi-tracked group of Joes going "woo hoo hoo" at the end. Like "Nosegrinds," I don't know how I feel about these lyrics anymore. I know there are some definite self-stabs in there, but otherwise it just kind of doesn't relate to anything that actually happened, other than a statement on the futility of the mix CD as a romantic gesture anymore. REALLY HEAVY SUBJECT MATERIAL DUDE.

Left a mix CD on your dresser-
paper wrapper with a tracklist scrawled in permanent marker.
Songs someone's convinced will mean something to you
when they've only known you for a week.

You've got piles of these potential suitors
Lined by genre, artist, alphabetical order
Some wear jeans with holes
Rad pairs of shoes
Some wear more makeup than you.

Why Hello.

Hey.

This is the blog of a band called Till Plains. We're from Cincinnati, OH. We are:

Peyton Copes - Guitar
Joseph Frankl - Guitar/Vocals
Casey Weissbuch - Drums
Erik Ziedses des Plantes - Bass/Vocals

MySpace sucks, and is more or less a ghost town now. This will be our main way of communicating with the world from now on. Thanks for reading.