I Am Not Much Help (EP)

I Am Not Much Help: Four more from Hotel Mira

An example of myth-making in the past couple years is I have said in multiple interviews that I wrote about 60 songs for our latest album that ended up being cut down to 12 songs. People really grabbed onto that sound byte and luckily it is true so I don’t feel like a loser every time it is brought up. We worked on about 60 songs and then cut it down to about 17 to record professionally and these four songs are being rescued from the cutting room floor. Listening to them three years after we first started working on them, they feel like a bit of a time capsule. The disco and dance elements, the musing on fame and feeling used, and the anxious, lonely, existential through line that seems to reverberate through most of what we do.

But what struck me about “Oh, Sunshine” , “Verona” and “Waste Away” and “The View From the Barstool” is how much all of them are so contained in their story-telling. These are truly simple songs about the confusion and frustration in the matters of the heart. Maybe there is a more head-y line here or there but I think mostly you are getting a collection of songs that feel like a book of essays or short stories. Based more in characters and situations than concepts or hypotheses. Because human beings like a good comparison or categorization than: If “I Am Not Myself” is layered, meta, challenging arthouse cinema then “I Am Not Much Help” feels more like 4 good episodes of a sitcom. Just Jerry and his various girlfriends of the week as hi-jinks ensue. Jesus, where is this going? Anyway, I think the songs have their charm and while I get why they didn’t make the cut for the album we are so happy that they will see the light of day. And we all sincerely hope you enjoy them as much as we do and you play them loud.

A big special thanks to Adam Kasper, Ryan Worsley and James Younger for all their hard work and brilliant ideas.

-Charlie