SIX LEGS TO HOLD YOU
I need to talk about Sexxtopus to set the stage for what came next. Around 2014 my friend Lincoln and I started a weekly song swap as a way to share new material, but also as a mental health outlet. We both struggled with our personal flavors of depression in those days (a veritable Baskin-Robbins of bullshit), so it was a great way stay connected as friends and stay alive and afloat as creative humans. The next logical step was recording our ideas. I set up a home studio in my Ballard neighborhood basement and Sexxtopus* was born.
Given my limitations as a recording engineer, Lincoln and I were lo-fi in ambition but determined to “get weird.” An 80's synth-pop vibe influenced the songs and early Prince albums were a touchstone. We cut loose and had a blast while I pushed myself as a home recordist. But all things must end, and in 2015 Lincoln and I both moved away from Seattle—and each other. It seemed a shame not to release at least some of our Sexxtopus songs, so I posted four of them in 2016 with little fanfare; the remaining tracks were banished to a hard drive for the rest of eternity…
But wait! Since I have committed myself to releasing songs from my “Lost Decade” (roughly 2015-2025), “All The Way Down” was on the list. It was meant to be a Sexxtopus song and prototype for what that fledgling project could sound like. It's totally 80's and the lyrics have a time-traveling "Back To The Future" vibe. The narrator reaches out to his past self to stop a bad relationship from happening until the "wait, was I the asshole?" revelation; it only took me 10 years to finish, so it's fitting that it's about time travel and regret.
“But Nathan, what about those other Sexxtopus songs?” you’re probably not asking. Well, hold my NFL Football phone people, because have I got a treat for you! This track inspired me to revisit my Sexxtopus archives and remix/touch up a few more, like “My Brain’s Broke.”
Lincoln initially shared this song as a home-recorded acoustic demo in 2014 and I loved it's bluntly-stated grapple with mental health. Inspired, I built a synth-pop arrangement around his demo. He recorded new vocals and electric guitar in my studio and it turned out pretty damn good. The biggest question is why did it take me this long to release it? Let’s no dwell on such and move along to another lamentable choice, such as the scrapped “Esmerelda Says Goodbye.”
This one never made the Sexxtopus cut because I planned on adding electric guitar...and then never added that electric guitar. I've given up that delusion and present the song here, unembellished and only lightly remixed. Sure, It sounds "Beatles-esque" but was actually inspired by the Bee Gees "Lemons Never Forget"; the stomp-stomp-clap may even evoke "We Will Rock You." And, speaking of Queen: Lincoln and I used their method for our own Sexxtopus backing vocals. We stood together at a single mic singing the same notes in unison, then stacking each harmony in turn. This was how Freddie, Brian, Roger, and (occasionally) John did it back in the day, and if it was good enough for them...
If I put this much effort into revitalizing those three tracks, why not touch up a few more tracks and call it a collection? Then my answer is this:
I tried to split things evenly between Lincoln-penned songs and my own, but also made sure both our personalities were on display. “Irrepressible Desire” and “Lie Down + Testify” are Lincoln at his most Prince-like (with a side of P-Funk on “Desire”), while “Cadillac In Heels” was my attempt at ZZ Top collaborating with Curtis Mayfield. Lincoln and I both wrote the lyrics to this one and exhausted our reserves of raunchy car/sex innuendo, so I slapped an “explicit” tag on this one. Sure, there are more songs—including the missing Nine Inch Nails-inspired “Hussy,” the David Bowie/Scott Walker influenced “Governess,” and the unfinished “Rosetta (Be The One)” and “Wildflowers Grow”—but these six I present to you now feel like the best representation of what we created (and one for each arm of our six-legged octopus). There may yet be gas in our Sexxto-tank, but for now I must move on to things that happened during my Lost Decade.
*The band name was inspired by my son's tiny stuffed octopus, which had six legs. What do you call a six legged octopus? A sextopus, of course--the double X only makes it sound sexier.
