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Songs for the Rich and Beautiful

by Harry Nichols

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1.
2.
Mecca 04:23
3.
4.
Table 4 03:14
5.
6.
7.
Table 7 02:41
8.
9.
Space Girl 04:39
10.

about

Amid the shock and horror of March 2020, my band, Noon Fifteen, was texting. Texting to shoot the shit, to process everything, to stay sane. You know, like we did in 2020. I had a lot of time on my hands, and turned to my friends’ music for comfort on those long, weird days. In the process I rediscovered my friend and bandmate Sam’s 2012 album, Songs to Make You Wealthier and More Attractive, and as it turns out, Sam had done the same with my college work, Love en Route. Discussing those albums, Sam casually tossed out that we respond to each other’s old records by writing entirely new ones– each song reflecting on and inspired by the other’s 2012 album. Song for song responses.

What you need to understand about Sam and my relationship is that we are each other’s creative enablers. We both like to dream big, and rely on each other for encouragement, regardless of how outlandish or grandiose those dreams may be. Predictably, we found ourselves readily agreeing to the task of composing a brand new 10-track album.
Sam released his response album, No Man is an Island, in 2021(It’s lovely, go listen). Now it’s my turn, and so I give you Songs for the Rich and Beautiful. It has been 8 years since my last LP, and I was excited to take on the challenge of 10 brand new songs, crafted for the purpose of this creative challenge. No backlog tunes. I explored new sonic territories for my solo project, and am incredibly proud of the end result. Below, find a breakdown, song for song, for how each track developed conceptually from Sam’s. Thanks for listening.

“What’s Eternity?”
I took Sam’s song, "Care of You" to be about wanting a relationship that is free of expectations of forever. The bridge line “Eternal fidelity’s quite a demand” has always stuck out to me listening to this one. It got me thinking about all of the things that I have done because of the “forever” anxiety. It’s funny to me that Sam’s chorus goes ”I could take care of you,” when really, my own anxieties about that led me to some of the most destructive behavior of my life. This song is a reflection on that stuff. I took Sam’s 6/8 meter for musical inspiration.

“Mecca”
Sam’s song, “Mecca Song,” is about his experience getting lost in search of Abbey Road Studios, famed recording studio of The Beatles and many others. My form of questing takes place within, usually creatively. Whereas Sam’s journey had a set destination, I am more meandering in my creative self exploration. It’s a playground. Its products lead me to external quests, to be sure, but I find, when the practical realities of life come into play, I retreat back inwards, to that imaginative world to build and escape again. The process repeats. I suppose Mecca is probably the closest I’ve come to summarizing the experience of my own artistry in song, with all of its ironies and contradictions.

“Breathstroke”
Sam’s “Ache and Rain” was adapted from a poem by Natalie Bell, and so I decided that I, too, would adapt another’s poem. This was a really fun project for me– I had never turned a poem into a song, and I decided to do something really different by selecting a poem I would be inclined to through-compose. No repeated verses or choruses, just the text and the music it invokes.

Sam’s tune does a lovely job of painting the lyrics with musical elements. I chose to expand the definition of “musical element” to include ambient noise. The result is one of my favorite little songs I’ve written.

The text was written by Andrew Riley, aka Nomoth, who I found on the indie poetry site DeepUndergroundPoetry.com.


“Table 4”
“The Chump and the Child,” on Sam’s Record, centers on the line “Don’t go down that road again.” It was a fun exercise for me to write a song about the inverse– a person trying their damnedest to steer a person down a road they know is no good for them. My song envisions the recruitment of someone to a cult over a meal. Its snakey sound, with twisting rhythms and layered whispered vocals, are meant to invoke a sense of distrust and hypnosis.

“Heteromasculine LoveGame”
I misinterpreted Sam’s song, “Alex Goes to Spain.” Or rather, I didn’t really know the full context when I wrote my response. I thought it was a tribute to a dear friend going abroad, in hopes they’d come back the same. It turns out Alex was just a dude Sam owed a favor to. I liked my interpretation better.

“Alex Goes to Spain” mentions Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” a few times, and so it felt like an invitation to incorporate as much of that material into my own song as I did Sam’s. I took the beat from “Alejandro,” and a number of motifs from “LoveGame” in a song about the absurd tension I felt about using the word “love” with male friends earlier in my life.

“Ms. Misato (When I Was an Idiot)”
Sam’s “Queen of Soul” is about a fictional romance– a true manifestation song. I felt I could do one better: a song about a manifestation romance set in a fictional universe. In the worst of the pandemic, I dove into anime as something to cleanse my palate of the world. Never a huge anime guy, I wasn’t reminded of anything when I watched. It was perfect escapism. Concurrently, I was becoming a big fan of Open Mike Eagle over his album, Anime, Trauma, and Divorce, which makes copious reference to the classic 90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I watched the show, and set my story in that universe.

High conceptual stuff aside, the song reflects on myself as a blundering young man, thinking with my nuts, making an idiot of myself in the process.

“Table 7”
“Face to Face” is about wanting to remain close to people when the currents of life are pulling you apart. I exemplified the idea in a song about someone making friends in the most impermanent of situations– over drinks at a wedding.

“I Spent the Entire Pandemic . . .”
This was the final song I wrote for the project, and I really struggled with it. Sam’s song about a crisis of identity, “Spilling Down,” led me in a number of directions before I landed on this one. In the end, I opted for something with few lyrics, using instruments and noise to communicate the profound discomfort of my evenings in the bleakest of the pandemic, which for me was right around January 6th, 2021. In those days, I turned to heavy metal, and listened to it almost exclusively for months, peppered with hip hop when I needed a change. While I had always dabbled in those genres, it was my first time dedicating myself to them exclusively for any stretch. I needed to feel like a different person– my own kind of identity crisis.

“Space Girl”
Sam’s “Big Ohio Bed” is about his wife, Mandy, and so I knew it was on me to write a completely sincere love song. Among the first tunes I wrote for this project, Space Girl was released as a single first, before I reimagined it for the album. When it comes to my kids, it’s never hard to write about love, and so my first reaction to the prompt was to capture a moment in my daughter’s life when she was obsessed with space. We bought her a space suit for Christmas, and she immediately donned it and bounced around the living room like she was on the moon. I was struck by the fleeting preciousness of the moment.

“October Bride”
Sam’s “Verses and Choruses” is a great pop tune about an artist flexing their ego for a love interest to no avail. The subject is definitely a thing in my wheelhouse. I decided to take my sense of ego and turn it inside out, as a final moment reflecting on myself as a young man who felt entitled to love, coming at it from all the wrong directions. It felt appropriate to close an album inspired by friendship, that is largely about friendship, with a track about a kind of friendship that took me a long ass time to get right.

credits

released October 14, 2022

Musicians:

Harry Nichols // Vocals, Guitars, Bass on 9, Synth + Drums on 5
Phil Shay // Drums on 1, 4, 8,10
Dan Collins // Drums on 2, 6, 7
Jeremy Betterly // Bass
Samuel B. Lupowitz // Pianos, Synth, and Organs
Katharina Nichols // Viola on 5
Joe Massa // Lead Guitar on 7
Chris Ploss // Aux percussion, Vocals on 8, Piano on 9
Mandy Goldman // Vocals on 8
Ariel Arbisser // Vocals on 6

JP Feenstra // Album art
Andrew Riley (AKA Nomoth) // Lyrics on 3

Mixed by Chris Ploss at Sunwood Recording, Trumansburg, NY
Mastered by Matthew Saccucimorano for Scaramanga Industries

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Harry Nichols Ithaca

From his earliest days of musical self-expression, Harry Nichols has had a ear for melody. Whatever eclectic influences work their way into his art- from metal to chamber pop- the result is always certain to thrill your brain. He has released music independently since 2010, and continues with his upcoming LP, SONGS FOR THE RICH AND BEAUTIFUL. He currently lives and gigs in Ithaca, NY. ... more

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