~~~LINER NOTES~~~

This is an album about growing despite inertia. It’s also a full-tilt collaborative album—every song was co-written with *at least* one person, most were written inside a mesh of friendships. You have to do your own growing, you have to break your own inertia, but your friendships and relationships are a good heavy cudgel.

CARELESS
Written by Ned Porter, Eli Dreyfus, and Will Feinstein

In my senior year of college, I moved in with a musician named Ned Porter. I had never heard music like Ned’s before. We were becoming close friends, but I was also nursing a paralytic jealousy of him. I got deep in my head about it, and I didn’t write anything for a year. What was the point, if my music didn’t sound like Ned’s?

Over the course of 2014 and 2015, my envy softened into a healthier, more flexible love. It turns out, great art doesn’t have to ruin you. It can make you happy.

Once I set down that insecurity, I realized something that should have been obvious to me. If I’m so enamored with the music made by my best friend, why don’t I make music WITH him? Duh, Eli. So we started writing songs together. “Careless” is our third collaboration. It’s a song about misbehavior.

“You can’t keep acting like this forever.”

GET SOME MONEY
Written by Eli Dreyfus, Henry Molofsky, Sam Vanderhoop Lee, and Sam Lincoln Smith

“Get Some Money” was written as a game of telephone. I called Sam Lincoln Smith in the fall of 2018 and asked him what chord progressions he was liking lately. Sam was in the car, but he dictated some changes to me over the phone. That call gave us the pre-chorus. I sent it to Henry, who called me back to play a riff he thought would work well over the chords. He showed Sam Vanderhoop Lee, who heard a whole-ass arrangement.

It’s a song about promising to do better next time, and believing it, despite all evidence to the contrary.

LIVE WITH THAT
Written by Danny Sullivan, Eli Dreyfus, Henry Molofsky and Tim Marchetta-Wood

Danny Sullivan wrote the chorus of Live With That after he spent a summer listening to the first two Brockhampton albums. He sent it to me in a big pile of demos, and I fished it out because it hurt so good. It reminded me of all the unhappy relationships that are maintained by inertia. I am a creature of inertia—I stick around for longer than I should, afraid to re-roll the dice, bargaining for a little more time with a status quo that doesn’t make me happy. That kind of mindless forward momentum works like Ambien. You can force yourself to sleep, to stay in the dream. That’s me. I hit snooze until the button breaks. I didn’t know that about myself until I was writing verses to go in between Danny’s sad, sleepy chorus.

THE DONUT SHOP
Written by Ned Porter and Eli Dreyfus

I have a crush on a friend. We go out, we meet up, we hook up, we wake up. In the morning, I leave her place, strutting like I’ve heard The Good News, and I need to tell someone. Specifically, our mutual best friend *needs* to know. I want to meet this friend for coffee to debrief my good luck. Only, she’s already at coffee with the same friend, having the same conversation.

This is the first song I made with Ned Porter. I asked him to rip off “California” by Childish Gambino, which is certainly a rip off of “Express Yourself” by N.W.A, which of course is a sample of “Express Yourself” by Charles Wright, which mysteriously sounds exactly like “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight. Fingers crossed that someone rips off “The Donut Shop” soon.

BREAK ME IN
Written by Danny Sullivan, Eli Dreyfus, Tim Marchetta-Wood, and Stephen Yell

When Danny Sullivan sent me this beat, I was standing outside a skate shop, fantasizing about being athletic, but too scared to go in and ask for a beginner’s skateboard. The problem with skate shops is that men work there. We finished recording the song before I learned to skate, but I know how now. I can’t do tricks, but I can move forward. This song is about setting that goal. Can I break my patterns? Can I find someone who will?

WAITING IT OUT
Written by Eve Asher, Eli Dreyfus, and Ned Porter

My dear friend Eve Asher pitched this song idea to me in 2014, as a Gladys Night-style torch song. “There should be a song about waiting out someone else’s perfect relationship. The feeling of refreshing Facebook to see if they’re single yet.” We wrote the lyrics together, and versions of it flopped around my various bands for a bunch of years.

In 2019, Ned Porter sent me a beat that sounded like Christmas was a crashed website. It was cheerful like obliviousness, like hoping in denial. A perfect fit for Eve’s lyric.

SINKING
Written by Eli Dreyfus, Henry Molofsky, and Sam Lincoln Smith

In 2018, my family took a trip to London together. It was the first time I had left the country, and the last time my family was all together before my parents split up. I dragged my sister to a Big Freedia concert. She complained. Then she got so drunk that she threw up in an alley. She didn’t want my folks to know how fucked up she’d been, and she really worked to hide it from them. I wish I didn’t find it so funny to watch her try to suppress a hangover the next day. I love you, Leah.

I composed this song with Henry Molofsky in the winter of 2018, and we had so much fun writing together that he joined the band. The keyboard line in the chorus of this song is his official first contribution to our music. I don’t make as many new friends as I used to, and Henry is a gem.

With Henry, and with my sister, this song is about welcoming someone into the fold. “Glad you’re here. Now MY problems are OUR problems. You’re welcome.”

UNPROFESSIONAL
Written by Eli Dreyfus, Alex Caplow, Sam Vanderhoop Lee, Adrien DeFontaine, and Emmett Herrick

This has gotta be the oldest song on the album. I wrote the verse melody in Adrien DeFontaine’s New Jersey studio in 2013 and the chorus melody at my parents’ house in 2014. The chorus had no lyric until 2015, when Alex Caplow was sleeping on the floor of my first Brooklyn apartment, and I showed him the melody. He sang “whatcha tryna say, whatcha tryna do?” I said “dude, it’s about an anxiety attack.” He said “oh, okay. Then you should sing ‘whatcha tryna say, I can’t hear a thing.” And then we had a song.