the morning after: photons 3/25/17 album release party brings joy, hangovers
SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2017 --
Today feels like Boxing Day.
Saturday night's album release show was Christmas...
WFPK’s “Live Lunch” was Christmas Eve...
...and now, on the Sunday after, there's nothing left to do but relax and play with CD-shaped toys.
As tonight comes to a close, I'm feeling good. (And, if you recall, "good" is exactly how Nick intended concert-goers to feel. Mission accomplished).
Everything is unwrapped, so to speak, and I can finally talk about the album without consequence. Until Saturday night’s show, it was my strange (and purely circumstantial) privilege to have been the only person to have heard the whole album in its final form. While We Still Have the Morning underwent some very last-minute changes -- from artwork to track listing -- and I was sworn to secrecy throughout the whole process. For about a week, my day-to-day with Nick went something like this:
Nick: hey come look at this cool thing I made
Me: wow yeah that's really cool can I preview it on the blog
Nick: no
Me: why
Nick: just wait 'till it comes out
Me: but people want to see it [grumbles indistinctly]
I make sure that nothing here is published without the band's consent. That being said, it was really hard not to share any details... and I deserve a medal for keeping quiet.
While We Still Have the Morning began as your standard list of nine songs, but thanks to one of Nick’s epiphanies (c. Tuesday, 9AM), morphed into something weightier: a concept album of sorts, complete with an introductory track that samples pieces from elsewhere on the album and lends the work a sense of unity. Over the course of about 72 hours, the original bombastic opener was scrapped, as Nick felt that kicking off the album with "another banger" (a la Moonlight) would be too reminiscent of In Infinite Indigo. "It didn't make sense to open with something that would set up a tone that wouldn't be matched elsewhere on the album," Nick said. The band agreed, and thus the album in its final form was born.
The setlist on Saturday night was wide-ranging: as expected, the band debuted material from Morning, but didn’t over-do it and still left much to the imagination. In addition to tracks off Indigio, some Phourist “deep cuts” (love that phrase) also surfaced: off Terrestrial Daydream, we heard the singsongy “Hello Nothing” and a jazzed up, full-band version of “Floated Along the Milky Way.” We were also lucky to hear an arrangement of “An Android Named C-17″ from The Garage Sessions. “Android,” one of my favorite tracks for its philosophical lyrics and killer melismatic vocals, is tricky to find; it’s not listed on any of the releases currently available online.
As always, the Photons delivered. The show was rounded out with two more of my favorite local bands: the effervescent Aby Laby Land, and the prog kings of One For The Doc.
If you missed the show (or weren’t able to snag a copy before they sold out), no worries. Digital copies are available on Bandcamp for $8.
WHILE WE STILL HAVE THE MORNING
OFFICIAL TRACKLIST:
1. Good Day Off
2. Well This Fiction...
3. Sorry
4. You Beg The Air You Breathe
5. Caught A Glimpse of the Mirror World
6. Sound The Alarm
7. The Figure Walking Past Your Window
8. I Will Find You There
9. Day 17, Walking This Time
10. Mountaintops (You Go Where You Need To Go)
11. Childlike
12. 12