Happy Ears: Unibummer by Medium Love
By KC Underwood
When I started the demo for Unibummer all the lyrics were really, really, comically dirty. NC17 level. I guess because it reminded me a bit of a motown / soul thing and I love all that thinly veiled sexual innuendo. Thank god it was just a starting point and I ditched the dirty talk. No one wants to hear that, not from a guy like me at least. This happened naturally though, as during the course of last year things grew so much darker from the hopeful state of mind I was in when I first started writing the music. This happens a lot with my songs, a song will start from a dark place and grow lighter and vice versa. Maybe it's a reflection of my own mood swings. It doesn’t really trouble me too much though, because that’s how a lot of the music I love seems to work. I mean, I’d like to write a song, like, like uh.. Pharrell’s “Happy”, but by the three minute mark it would inevitably turn dark. 'Clap along if you feel like happiness eludes you, Clap along if you feel like the rooms closing in on you', etc. Note to self: write faster when happy. The title is an in joke, a universal bummer, a unifying drag, a Ted Kaczynski holiday retreat. I don’t like talking about lyrics, all I can say is that’s it about hope through loss.
In 2020 I lost my two band mates to Covid. They didn’t die, exactly, they just didn’t want to be in a band anymore. Which is a small death, the kind that you can feel everywhere, in all the things that were lost this past year besides life. So I had to record it myself, which isn’t as much fun, but more straight forward, faster. I enlisted a friend of mine to come down to the studio and record as many drum tracks as he could in a day. I think we ended up doing 8, which will make the core of the album. I can do everything else at home on my own, which is fine by me compared to being in a studio, watching the time tick away, strange people coming and going, lots to distract you from your end goals. I love getting lost listening to and making music, turning off the mind as much as possible, which is far easier with a bit more privacy. I remember recording the vocals out in the desert near Joshua Tree California, where I grew up, while self isolating before seeing family.
The only people around were Sophie, my partner and sole surviving band member, and our 20 month old baby Wyn. You can hear Sophie singing harmonies, and you can hear Wyn’s chatter / crying / giggles on just about everything else at some sort of barely audible yet subconsciously perceivable level. Once I recorded it all I sent it over to Nathan Ridley at Hermitage Works and he got it all sounding clean and shiny. He’s lovely to work with and all the people there are friendly and working on all kinds of cool stuff everyday. It’s been a great place to work from when I need a change of scenery. The final mastering was added by an old friend of mine in L.A., Dean Reid, who does a lot of really cool work with mostly pop artists there. He produced the first Big Deal ( my old bands) record, so it was lovely to get to work with him again. He’s calm, borderline too calm. Just what’s needed most times.
I had made videos for the last couple singles on my own, and although it was fun and interesting, it was also really time consuming, as I don’t know what I’m doing on any level. Trial and error is cool and all but it takes ages, and I wanted the video to be ready close to release time the single. Emmet Zander Kinny is an artist based in Dublin that I discovered via Instagram and we ended up chatting about music and the things that get us going and next thing you know he’ s doing the art and animating a video. It's one of the best things about making art, meeting other artists and coming to gather to make something exciting. Watching the music you make go into someones brain and come out in a new form is awesome, and gives you a lot of hope that it will do the same thing for other people who hear it. All life is art.