Hard to Swallow [2018 Deluxe Remaster]

by Evan Schafer

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1.
Instrumental
2.
Comets in the sky . . .  Sonic spectral incandescent lightbulbs  Flash above my head  Inconsiderate notions  She flails without a purpose underneath  the pale moon tidings  Flash above my head  Flashing above my head  Commerce spellbound untidy transfers  Cursing about my head  Loud as shit storms rolling in the harbor  and pursing my lips with dread IT’S OVER  Spurting flowers budding cultures widely  Retract inside my head  Visions of a world with all its hardware  returning to Club Med  Comets in the sky . . .  IT’S OVER.
3.
Instrumental
4.
Come to bed, it’s warm in here  Cut my pillow, set in stone Come to bed, it’s warm in here  The lobotomist is due tonight  Just before you dream I’ll give you that anesthetic  so you can go peacefully  Come to bed  and maybe you’ll see what it’s like to be me  Come to bed, it’s warm in here  Come to bed, it’s more than you could hear  And when it’s silent I know that you’re feeling that way  And it’s “I know, you know, it’s everybody or no one”  All the pieces fall into place and once upon a time  You said once again, you said it twice  You said it three times, you said it no times—I don’t care  And here he comes, the hallway floor is creaking  Suddenly there comes the knife, it’s time to open you up  It’s silent when you die  It’s silent all the time  It’s silent in the night, it’s silent in the day, it’s silent when I bury you  tonight  Come to bed  It’s warm up here in heaven.
5.
Zip up, ‘cause it’s cold out there  Assuming the winter is long  Sometime I’ll buy you gloves  Assuming this song is still sung  Sooner or later, sooner or later  It’ll be hard to swallow  Town vs. town, a roundabout sound  It’s so easy to fear and follow  Get up, ‘cause it’s snowing outside  Perspiration melts into canvas  Murder’s hot, it digs inside your soul  The hearts that were bleeding are flushing the boldness  and letting it out the back door.
6.
Instrumental
7.
I’ve been to the tempo losing ground—it’s a trace  I got nothing—all your confessions mean nothing  . . . than the last man can do  I feel no heart—you don’t know we’ve got nothing  You don’t have a square beat—  you may not see to climb.
8.
Instrumental
9.
Instrumental

about

This record was the record before my eponymous LP, a record that I had personally marked with not only a sense of an era coming to a close, but also a sense that I, as an artist, was inherently changing. For the better or worse, only those listening could really tell, but personally, it was a move that I felt was ultimately necessary.

"Evan Schafer" was planned as and supposed to be the end of my recording career as a songwriter, much like Billy Joel called it quits after "River of Dreams." So, in a sense, I look at Hard to Swallow as a transitionary work, one that was leading towards the starkness of E.S. but still kept on the route of heavy, layered orchestration and complex arrangements that I’ve always kept present.

I’m glad that I took a good listen back to these masters, as so many lovely secrets came out in unearthing their sonic glory. Not only did I rediscover and reinstate several doubled tracks (most obviously the Fender Rhodes in “Electric Thoughts (Part I)” and the vibraphone in several places over the course of the album) but I also found two fragments of music—the bonus tracks included here—that showed works in progress that weren’t finished. While their inclusion doesn’t resonate as completed “songs”, they do tend to mirror the tilting feel of the rest of the album: going somewhere but never fully reaching wherever it’s heading.

It was a true culmination of artistry and the magnitude of a composer at their core to create a sonically rich album, the intention of which was to be a commercially viable release (which it wasn’t), while also worrying about whether the music would stand the test of time. For me, it has, and in a very special and different way than other releases of mine—the music is as exciting and as pulsating with life now as it was when I first sat down with a single microphone, acoustic Yamaha upright, 4-track tape recorder, MacBook Pro and headphones and began to record “Charcoal”, the start of the session work for this record.

It is an honor to feel it, still, so alive.

-Evan Schafer

credits

released February 20, 2013

Produced by
Evan Schafer

Engineered, mixed & edited by 
Evan Schafer 

All music and lyrics by 
Evan Schafer 

©2013, 2018 (reissue) Cherry Blossom Records (ASCAP) 
All rights reserved. Lyrics reprinted with permission.

Originally released in February 2013 

Album photography: Erik Sullivan 
Evan Schafer 

Special thanks to: 
My brain, my parents – Debra and Bill, 
Paula Jones, PJ DiMuzio & Nelson Vicens. 

Thanks to: 
Apple Inc., Yamaha products, Alesis, Logic Pro, 
Fender, Tascam, Audio Technica 

Dedicated to John Joseph Madden


Remastered in 2017/2018 from the original analog masters and digital tracking

Supervised and re-mixed by Evan Schafer

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all rights reserved

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about

Evan Schafer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My name is Evan Schafer. I am an indie musician with a strong grounding in traditional composition, but the material always has a unique flair. I guarantee not being bored out of your gourd when turning on one of the records. I produce, mix, and engineer everything myself, and have done so since late 2005. ... more

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