After myriad false starts due to detrimental universal matters, Prairie Clamor's Will Bjorndal finally was able to create True Songs. For Will's third album, he ventured first to Canada in fall of 2021, hauling his sixty-pound pedal steel guitar on a sled three-quarters of a mile down a footpath in order to practice uninterrupted, hoping to regain his chops after a summer of musical isolation working as a bee researcher in rural western Minnesota. From there, Michigan, where he met up with his brother at a small Scandinavian-inspired, graduate-only visual art and design school where he was given a room in a basement and one month of time to record. Unfortunately, the studio flooded on the very first day of scheduled tracking.
After a week of lost time ripping up carpet pad, assessing instrument conditions (everything was, somehow, okay), spraying the walls with bleach, frantically thanking graduate students who helped him during the flood, and hunting down vintage equipment formerly lost to the depths of the school, Will was able to get back to work and create the album that had been stuck in his head for over a year: True Songs.
The goal of True Songs was to be both universal and specific: music that anyone can hum along to and emotionally connect with, while at the same time, tell specific stories in and about specific geographic areas. These often hyper-local narratives construct analogies that, in turn, relate to more universal, connectable concepts. For example, very few other than Will have gotten lost in an industrial park while riding their bike, but many have felt lost in the face of increasing industrialization, environmental destruction, and the depersonalization that comes along with capitalism's tendency for empty commercialization.
The same idea was applied to the album's sound: an album instantly familiar, yet still sonically interesting. Guitar, bass, and drum-driven tones were injected with the more unconventional sounds of autoharp, recorder, modular synth, pedal steel, and others, to help it on the way to its goal. Was it achieved? Sort of. It's a difficult needle to thread, and of course, it's impossible to create something universal but the attempt to reach out and connect with someone unfamiliar is one of great importance.
CD VERSION AVAILABLE:
prairieclamor.bandcamp.com/album/true-songs
released May 20, 2022
All music and lyrics by Will Bjorndal except "Backyard," with lyrics by Will and Peter Bjorndal. Engineered, produced, and mixed by Will and Peter Bjorndal. Mastered by the incomparable Neil Weir.
Will Bjorndal - acoustic guitar, Audubon bird call, cymbals, drums, drum machines, electric bass guitar, electric guitar, fake choir, finger snaps, FM synthesizers, folding plastic table, handclaps, LinnStrument, mandolin, maracas, modular synthesizer, organ, pieces of paper, pedal steel guitar, phase distortion synthesizers, piano, stylophone, tambourine, wavetable synthesizers.
Peter Bjorndal - electric bass guitar, "hey," LinnStrument, modular synthesizer, wavetable synthesizers.
Recorded at The Friendly Puppy Music Centre for Basic Research - Satellite Office 2.
For liner notes and other interesting information, visit:
archive.org/details/@friendly_puppy_music.
prairieclam.org
friendlypuppy.org
Wholesale ordering:
thebusinessanacortes.com/distro/