THE MYTHOLOGY OF EMPATHY

The debut album

You can listen to the album above by selecting a track. You can also listen to and download the album on Bandcamp, and on Google Drive. I personally recommend watching the lyric videos on YouTube; as you can't actually hear the lyrics, those videos clarify which lyrics go where.

The whole point of the Sunsetters as a project is to create an entire fictional discography, to create a whole fictional rock band. So there must be a first album, an album where the band is still getting used to each other, isn't doing anything too experimental. It's the debut album. It must be allowed to not be that impressive. We relied on this, as Lindsay and I were obviously new to writing music, and writing a "debut" album was.. obviously the best way to start! This paragraph was full of obvious statements.

We started writing this in I think 2014. At first, Lindsay did most of the work, writing full-band compositions for several songs, and even beginning work on songs for later albums based on the titles we'd come up with first. I wrote two songs: "The Last Sunset" and "Perfection." Eventually, gradually, I grew used to MuseScore and to sheet music, and I began to edit Lindsay's compositions and add to them. In 2016 we released a full version of this album, with the same tracklist but everything in a much earlier form. Some years later (editor's note: I cannot find v2 but if I do I will give a date) we released a revision, with more polish across the tracks. It wasn't until we released the next two albums in 2020 that I was able to make far more ambitious revisions, using my developed skills as an editor, and produced version 3, which is at present the current revision of this album. Point is this album's been in the works for a while.

Alongside the album download, we made two PDFs, a fictional one and a nonfictional one. The fictional one, "Words from the Sunsetters," depicts a magazine interview with lead guitarist Degan Allen where he recalls some anecdotes from the creation of the album. The nonfictional one was actual commentary, Lindsay and I mentioning some of the technical details of writing the album.

But here on this webpage, I'd like to talk about the album all over again, perhaps in a more casual way.

Mythology Art

A woman sits on a couch, staring at TV static, with a glass of water on the table in front of her. This is something of a recurring image in my stories, a symbol of EAT, who gets a few songs dedicated to her on this album. I mean, EAT's my monster, of course I'm gonna want to make songs about her.

I love Quinn's art, though. I love the texture to it, and the shades of blue he used. I love the beam of blue light coming from the TV. I wanted the first Sunsetters album cover to be iconic, pleasant to look at, memorable, recognizable, and Quinn nailed it.

Drowning Under the Influence

A punchy punk rock song about a dysfunctional family. Father comes home, drinks, and crashes in front of the TV, scaring his son. The concept pulls from James Joyce's short story "Counterparts."

We had decided from the start-- over a decade ago-- that the first song on the first album needed to be punk. There's something to this contrast that feels a lot like starting a complicated album off with a basic catchy pop single. It definitely gets things started, doesn't it?

Burning Books

More involved, a midtempo heavy hard-rock song, like something Metallica may have once made. The lyrics this time are about the Blind Man, the Fear that got represented in Rapture as Tiresias.

Honestly this song kinda really fucking rocks. There's definitely details of it that are Early, as I knew what I wanted it to sound like but didn't know the techniques to bring them to reality, but that's what happens with a debut. I consider everything to do with the compositions at the core of this piece, which are all pure Lindsay, to be just.. the most killer rock. There's gold buried in here. "Burning Books" is what this whole project represents; all the potential is in this song.

Hidden in the Trees

A playful hard-rock song, jumping between distinct sections. The lyrics are loosely, broadly, about the protagonist of one of the defining Fearblogs, LizardBite's Hidden in the Trees, as he serves two masters. This song moves directly into the next track.

I've rewritten this song several times over by now. It's very busy, there's a lot of musical ideas in it, mainly Lindsay's sinister metal compositions that I lacked the experience to bring together into a cohesive piece. It is entirely possible I will rewrite it again someday. In its present state though, there's enough cohesion to surprise me.

Memento Mori

Part 2 of "Hidden in the Trees," this one's an instrumental lingering in a motif introduced previously. The mood is dangerous and doomed.

Yeah this one's fine. It's also been rewritten many times, and maybe I could polish off a few rough edges and work on the second guitar solo, but actually most of what's here meets my standards. This one's not really meant to be all that impressive a piece; it's meant to be something you could picture the fictional band extending and jamming over on live performances. Lindsay wrote a solid doom riff, and that's all this song needs to be.

Perfection

An angry singalong song about a very controlling abusive mother.

I've had the chords, the riffs, the tempo changes, and the lyrics ever since I first wrote this in 2014. This current rendition is significantly polished, though, to reflect a song the full Sunsetters band would play. When I go back to this album, I'm always surprised at how much of a bop this one is. It bops, man! It's a banger!

Is This All?

Sad acoustic alt-rock. A breakup.

This one's a core Lindsay piece. It's got a complete vibe to it and feels appropriate for the year 2000, when this album's supposed to take place.

The Last Sunset

Grieving piano. Instrumental.

The first song I ever wrote! Hasn't changed much since I wrote it. There's some conscious Genesis influence to the slow fading chords, and this song is accompanied by a poem that just does not fit anywhere in the song.

Rise of Her Rain
i- Distant Mind | ii- Intrusive Thoughts | iii- Soliloquy for the Dying | iv- Progress | v- Regrets

The big prog-rock song of the album, in five movements. Lyrics tell of a woman's increasingly introspective experience visitng her dying friend in the hospital. The concept has some influence from James Joyce's "The Dead."

The full story of how hard this one was to make can be found in the NONFIC PDF. Needless to say, it took a long time and taught us a lot. I'm particularly proud of movement 3. This song goes on a journey. It's certainly necessary, as we wanted Sunsetters to be a prog band and weren't sure if we could even write something like that. This song passes. It feels.. whole. Closes off the album.

Reverie

One last instrumental, acoustic guitar duet then synth strings.

Ugh. If there's any song on Mythology that needs a remake, it's this one. There's some good melody work in there, but honestly I could scrap it all so long as something replaced it. This is just meant to be a strange quiet outro, reprising a motif from earlier in the album. It.. passes.

Next album: Summer Sucks
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