Mean Bone one-year anniversary
Today marks the one-year anniversary of Mean Bone. I present five mercifully brief reflections, if you’ll indulge.
The intent of Mean Bone is to define doom folk in terms of songwriting. By which I mean a variety of forms: 3rd person tale, 1st person confessional, murder ballad told in dialogue, true historical narrative, bluesy couplets, lyrical mood pieces, explicit protest, and so on. That’s why the record’s so (too?) long, and why there’s no vinyl yet—the 13 tracks need a double LP. Oops.
Musically the intent was to flip the focus of Doom Folk. Whereas the first record focuses on folk plus doom, Mean Bone focuses on doom plus folk. Hence, full drum kit and fuzz guitar. The story I want to tell with Buzzard is this: an escalation from folk to metal. What’s next? More prog and psych with keyboards and synths. Plus a contrasting stripped-down folk-only record.
While debut Doom Folk was written on acoustic guitar, the bulk of Mean Bone was written on electric guitar, namely an Ibanez GIO with a Cattle Decap sticker, through an Ibanez DS7 distortion pedal, plugged straight into a MOTU console and DAW. No other guitar gear. Well, I use a capo, if that counts, to maintain sonorous guitar voicings across keys.
The title Mean Bone refers to the wickedness in human nature. There’s a mean bone in each and every body. The lyrics cover different ways this meanness manifests: religion, speciesism, greed, fascism, bullying, entitlement, grievance, sociopathy, environmental degradation, and oh so much more…
Favorite songs? I could hem and haw all day, but I’ll pick three:
A) “Murder in the White Barn,” influenced by Dock Boggs’ version of the centuries-old “Pretty Polly,” a chilling murder ballad told in dialogue.
B) “Darkness Wins,” influenced by the cosmic nihilism of Weird Fiction author Thomas Ligotti.
C) “Dunwich Farm,” a fun mash up of Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” and Lovecraft’s “Dunwich Horror.” Good times.
That’s all for now.