Thomas Irvin.com

Here I present a few songs from my forthcoming album in their rough form. From time to time I’ll be updating these pages with new versions and new songs.

Please Note: these songs are posted here in the hope that anyone hearing them will do me the favor of emailing me with some sort of criticism of the songs. I’m really not interested in hearing anything of a general nature–so "They’re pretty good, I liked ’em" or "The songs suck, and so do you" doesn’t really do me any good. What would be nice to hear is something like "I liked the way you go from F minor to F major in the chorus of ‘Pink Roses’" or "your voice on ‘A Crush’ sounds like Anthony Michael Hall trying to sing ‘Birthday’ by the Beatles from the movie Sixteen Candles". Now THAT I would find interesting.

These tracks were recorded at Presto Recording in Lincoln and Studio B in Omaha, engineered by AJ Mogis and Mike Mogis. Calling these songs rough mixes is actually being generous. They’re really more like raw playback tracks–there’s not much of a mix at all here, so don’t expect the level of quality that you may be used to from other artists who’ve recorded at Presto. Also, all these vocals are scratch tracks, meaning I just ran through them one time in the studio while recording other things, I’ll go back and do proper vocals later.

All songs Copyright 2003 Thomas Irvin. Please don’t distribute these songs, but if you care to direct anyone to this site, please do so.

Incredulous (4.5 MB)

Ben Armstrong (Head of Femur, The Black Dahlias, Pablo’s Triangle, Gabardine, Commander Venus) plays drums, Jonathan Hischke (My Name is Rar Rar, Strawberry, The Flying Lutenbachers, Harvey Sid Fisher, Pablo’s Triangle) plays bass, and I play everything else. I’ll probably end up calling the album "Unrequited Love Songs" and that title comes from a line in this song. There’s a heavy Spice Girls influence at work here, mixed with a healthy dose of Lush.

A Crush (3.6 MB)

Features Colby Starck (Bobby Conn, Strawberry, Pablo’s Triangle) on drums, Jonathan on bass, and Harry Dingman (The Millions, For Against) on the two electric guitar tracks panned left and right. I play the acoustic guitar and the electric guitar track panned center. There’s a vocal miscue coming into the second verse, and the verses have yet to be fleshed-out fully–eventually each of three verses will be unique; this version’s vocals are essentially variants on two verses. Thanks to Katie who loaned the Danelectro that I play. (What? Thomas Irvin playing something other than a Rickenbacker? Perhaps he’s branching out...)

Pink Roses (2.7MB)

Features the same line-up as Incredulous. This song is about my grandmother, who taught calculus at a time when most women didn’t even attend college. Somehow I turned that into a song.

Please email any comments to Thomas Irvin. I look forward to hearing from you.