“Months” - Reflecting on the project in memories and album covers
In September of 2011 I came up with a concept for an album.
I always tended to organize my life by months, and living in an area of the world with 4 distinct seasons, the shifts in weather month to month throughout the year made each month feel even more distinct. I almost felt each month had its own unique color, synonymous with its name.
I was 17 when this project began. The basic concept was this:
Write one song each month for one year. Each song will be based on the ‘feel’ that particular month brings. The lyrics would detail my thoughts and feelings I went through that month. It was late in September when the idea came to me, the first month of my senior year. I also felt it would be a great way to document my final year of grade-school.
Since September was almost over, my first song in the “Months” project was a simple song made with only MIDI instruments (piano, strings, and my personal favorite--reed organ). I intended to eventually add vocals and guitars, but in the end left it how it was by the end of September. That was the thing--I had to complete the song by the end of the month. By the 1st of the following month, no more writing lyrics, no more composing.
So my real start on the “Months” project always felt like October, and that’s why that song has always held a special place in my heart.
For this album, I would name each song simply the name of the month. So the October song was called “October,” and it was track 2. Then I’d write “November” and so on.
And the band name, I would decide:
Rainclouds.
October began with MIDI reed organ, and did just what I intended with this concept, it sounded like what I felt October sounded like. Mostly breezy and cool and a bit uplifting sounding, but shifts to moments of spookiness like my favorite holiday.
This would mean December sounds cold, atmospheric, sometimes dark. I tried to recreate the feeling of being outside in the winter, when sound seems to float far away, and everything is quiet.
I wrote not just of my thoughts that December, but of past Decembers, and all December meant to me.
I had written a song called “August” way before starting the months project, and had the idea to slap that song as the final track, since it was a nice coincidence to have a song named a month already. I thought it’d be nice and nostalgic to have a re-recorded old song at the end, but I ended up just seeing how much I’d grown as a songwriter since then.
And that was another thing I always loved about doing the Months project: I’d see my own progress, growing as a writer, compositionally and lyrically. And I’d also see my growth as a person, and what I went through. Like a strange, strange journal.
So “July” ended up feeling like the big finale for that year. I even put an album medley at the end of the song.
I finished up the album, calling it “Changing Color” based on the lyric in October. The album cover would be a strange boxy mess of colors lined up next to each other. From left to right, the colors represented the months of the year, starting with September. The colors we what I, for whatever reason, associated with that month. I always wondered if I got the colors stuck in my brain from a calendar I had as a child, where each month had a different color scheme. I always found October to be kind of dark blue, and January to be a light light blue like ice. I wasn’t too happy with the album cover though, so I changed it after releasing the album to one that still featured the colors, but over a picture of Lake Michigan. Changing the album covers last minute, or even after release, would become something of habit with me… (“Changing Cover,” if you will).
Changing Color, 2012 (left-early cover, right-final cover)
But I didn’t want it to end. So I started the project up again with a Months #2 that September.
This time I’d name the songs like I would any other song I write, but the concept remained the same. By the end of the year I had an album I’d name “Empty Hearts & Sinking Ships” after a lyric in “Petrichor.”
This album had a cover change, just before release, and good thing too, because the original was awful. And thus would begin my constant use of trees and/or leaves in my album covers.
Empty Hearts & Sinking Ships, 2013 (left-early (bad) cover, right-final cover)
This album also would feature the longest song to ever appear in a Months album (and also the longest title I guess), “Until the Dark Dissolves: The Finale Begins When the Curtain is Closed” clocking in at 11:18.
Again, it’s amazing to see the journal that this project can be, with songs like “Petrichor” based around the first major death in my life, and “Absent from the Ocean’s Tomb” marking me gleefully detaching myself from religion at 19.
Then there was a third Months album, I knew before I even began it, for whatever reason, that it would be called “Silent Spectrum” and I ended up working that into some songs (including the closer of the same name).
This one technically had 2 changes of cover, first from probably the worst cover I’ve ever made, then to what I quickly changed it to, and the cover til long after release. Later on I changed it again when the “band” name changed from Rainclouds.
Silent Spectrum, 2014 (left-early (real bad) cover, center-rainclouds cover, right-final cover)
This Months albums at this point slowly crept away from being strictly about being modeled after the feel of a month, although they still strongly represented my thoughts and feeling during the month in which I wrote it.
“Strange Places” would be the fourth Months album, and the only with less than 12 tracks (because I ended up cutting the first 2, not being satisfied with them).
The first album cover was simple, done right in the first month, and although I planned on changing it, I did like the brighter tone it conveyed, which inspired the final cover concept. This cover was a picture of a field behind a library (the same field referenced in “The Field Behind the Library” of the 2017 EP). After a tornado that caused slightly-above-minor damage to my neighborhood, I fled to the library the next morning to experience the view, an eerie brightness and calm after a dark storm.
Strange Places, 2016 (left-early cover, right-final cover)
The logo on the right is a remnant of the artist name being Rainclouds, the logo setup itself meant to look like a rain cloud with rain falling. I’ve tended to keep the eight-forward-slash logo since it just looks cool.
The title track of Strange Places marks a point in the Months discography where I felt I was exploring a new sound, one I’d mostly stick to for the rest of the Months albums til now.
A funny trivia about track 9, “July Fourth” is that the title is simply referring to the fact that it’s the fourth “July” song in the Months project, not the holiday. I kept the title to be… ironic or something.
Also on this album is the song “Someday I’ll Finally Get ’There’” which I’ve often looked back on as my favorite song I’ve ever written.
Then comes the self-titled album, the fifth Months record. I never thought I’d do a self-titled album, but there it is. The main reason was that I wanted to consistently present a new sound on the album. When I started writing it I was releasing under the name “Rainclouds” and with the release of this album (almost one full year after finishing writing it), I decided to do a fresh start, renaming to Threadleaf, a name I’m much more proud of and better fitting the heavy leaf and tree themes in my music. This would mean the album would actually be called just that: Threadleaf.
The album cover was simple, and I knew I’d use it right near the beginning of writing. Nothing too extravagant, not with much meaning, but some that, with a little editing and light effects, gave a feel I really loved. It’s a picture of my shoe and a fancy designed carpet, some kind of brass bar obstructing part of the view. But with the bright orange light effects and the dark purplish border, the colors were really accentuated. Just another example of me caring about feel more than meaning.
I wanted to continue this sound on the sixth months album, (and the newest one released as of now!) Winter Flowers. Right away with the track Hyacinth, I almost feel that song could be found on “Threadleaf.” I was happy to have a consistent sound.
But, I started to get too used to it. I’d written song after song in the format since “Strange Places” and I started to feel writer’s block, worried that the songs were sounding too same-y, too formulaic, but afraid to change it up too much and create a disjointed, uneven record.
Reasons like this are why I am temporarily ending the “Months” project, and that announcement is why I’m writing all of this…
Winter Flowers had 3 different covers before its release, first was a cover when the album had a different title. I always wanted to have a less serious sounding album name, so as something overly long and ironic I originally used the title “Unsuccessfully Growing Flowers in the Winter” which poked at the basic lyrical concept of what came to be simply, “Winter Flowers.” Realizing that not all things that are planned to come to fruition and bloom in life transpire. Dreams, relationships, places. The future I built for myself in my head simply wasn’t going to ever happen, and I learned during the writing of the album that it’s necessary to build up a new future goal to strive for than to just wallow and consider yourself dead.
The album cover then switched to a similar one with the altered title, then finally, just a month or so before release, the final cover, and one of my favorites: a pink and dark teal color schemed cover featuring a hyacinth flower. All three covers feature the window of my room in the house I grew up in—one of the last photos before I left it for good.
Winter Flowers, 2018 (left-early cover, center-title change cover, right-final cover)
Another example of Months being a journal, this album contains my most cynical of songs like Honeywort, which says “I won’t ever find what I’m looking for,” as well as more hopeful and understanding, with my favorite stanza I’ve written being this, from Involuntary Chrysalis:
“What remains of what I used to have are shards of glass that scattered,
and I spent too long dwelling on the minor scapes that I’ve gathered,
now that time has done some healing and what broke dispelled a song,
you’ll find me contently humming and sifting through the wreckage of it all.”
And with that song ended Winter Flowers.
So I began the seventh Months project, not knowing I would make it a sort of a finale season of “Months.” Maybe there will soon be a comeback when I feel inspired. Maybe I’ll continue writing one song per month, but as a different project or concept. All I know is with these 12 songs and a seventh year, it feels like a finale for whatever reason. I don’t want an eighth album if it’s going to be more of the same. I need a fresh idea.
That being said, this seventh Months album is the one I might be most proud of, truly.
It may follow the same sound and style of the previous few, but I felt I gave it enough energy, diversion, and intent behind it for it to stand above. The songs tend towards being shorter, to the point, displaying a single idea for that particular month. I for whatever reason decided for each track title to be only one word. Maybe that has something to do with further conceptualizing the album. The challenge has been to make my meanings concise, songs more to the point, and short song titles forced me to boil down that meaning even further. Like the song title “Apricity” which says a lot about the song’s meaning in one word. Apricity, I learned while researched for the song, is a word which here means “the warmth of the sun in the winter.” Which on its own is a nice metaphor for what I felt then, in January.
The album cover is also as simple as I could make it, featuring no words, no “Threadleaf,” no album title. Simply a painting of a sliced orange. Eight purple slashes. All over a picture of a tree, of course.
I painted the orange years ago, always wanting to use it for an album cover, but never knowing just how or why. Initially I had the cover as just the painting on the canvas with an orange border. But I wanted more, I wanted… tree.
The meaning might be forced, but it makes sense to me. When I started the album I felt like, although I was young, I was way past the time in one’s life where they typically meet people, make friends, learn new things, have new experiences. Pulling a bit from Winter Flowers and described on track 2, Germinate, I felt like I was something young, growing up and escaping from the ground in the spring, but autumn came, and I never blossomed. The other flowers grew without me.
Though, I remind you, by “Apricity” my attitude shifted a bit.
Which is why, I think, behind the lonely and singular orange slice, is a bright and sunny image of the light between tree branches.
So, here it is, I’m announcing that the seventh and “final” Months album is called:
Way Past Blossoming, TBA (final cover)
At the near septennial of when I started Months, with Changing Color in September of 2011, to now, writing a song called Septennial in August of 2018, I’m excited for the future and feel like I might get a chance to re-blossom, if you will. I’m about to start college again, aiming for a bachelors degree and a specific career in mind.
I don’t know exactly when I’ll finish Way Past Blossoming, hopefully sooner rather than later. I don’t know what will become of “Months” or what my music will become once September comes. I want to try new things. I have a couple in mind, such as reviving the politically driven “It doesn’t have to stay this way” concept as an EP, and making a short album based on graveyards I’ve visited called “End Homes.”
But I want the time and attention to decide what’s next. And once “Way Past Blossoming” is done, Months will be for the time being, and I’ll explore.
So, with the basic structure of the final song complete, I see the full scope of “Months” and I wanted to reflect.
And by the way, listen to all this junk at threadleaf.bandcamp.com!
I’m excited to have this 7-album concept run complete.
I don’t know when I’ll return, or what I’ll do, but maybe someday
