This New Song Is Called 'Demon Slayer'

When I started writing this song my son was really getting into the manga (or is it anime?) called ‘Demon Slayer’. You know, this one:

A Japanese teenager’s family is slaughtered by demons, and his sister is turned into one, so Tanjiro, that’s his name, vows to devote his life to slaying them. That’s the starting point. So that seemed like a good direction. A song about demon slaying.

I didn’t want it to come off like it was about fighting personal demons, so I consciously decided that it would be about literally fighting ghouls from the underworld, or wherever. Maybe they’re in the sky. Because it was inspired by my son, it turned into a song about protecting someone from those creatures. Since demons don’t exist, if you remove that from the equation, it is essentially a song about wanting to protect someone. Always good to know what you’re writing about, however absurd the topic. Knowing what the real emotions are and knowing what is fabricated.

I decided I want to record some throwback songs, something that I haven’t heard yet in the modern day. Not saying it’s not there, I just haven’t heard it. The best reference point I can come up with is ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ by BJ Thomas, which was of course written by Bacharach and David. The way it approaches country music, or folk, but doesn’t quite get there. Or take ‘Wichita Lineman’, it’s kind of a country song but it’s also a psychedelic pop song. There were not a lot of acts that threaded that needle. Through the years I have always told people that my favorite songwriters are Jimmy Webb and Bacharach/David, and it’s no coincidence that the 2 songs I mention here are written by them. I guess I decided, finally, to cut to the chase and try to write songs like that. No easy feat but why not dream big with your little dreams? It takes guts to write about talking to the sun, because you think he’s been sleeping on the job. It’s so over the top that it becomes endearing. It’s a tightrope walk that few can pull off. Nick Lowe can do it. Sparks can do it. ELO could do it. It is a needle I’ve been trying to thread for most of my life.

So this song is the real beginning of that record I want to make. I listen back to the song I posted last month, the first thing I posted on Substack, ‘The Lofoten Vortex’, and now I wonder if that song could be re-worked a little bit, could it work with this song? Could they be on the same record? They both have traces of a late 60s/early 70s pop classical piano motif. The covers I did of ‘Lady Pilot’ and ‘The Skies Above’ may have some ideas in their arrangements that I can plunder for something else. Remove the song and you still have the shadow of it, its arrangement. Shedding the larval skin but that’s what you're looking for. Some new skin. Like Buffalo Bill! The famous fictional serial killer!

A while back I did a Talkhouse interview with Liam Kazar, a brilliant singer, songwriter, guitar player, this guy:

He said something that stuck with me. Talking about the 2 years it took him to make his debut album ‘Due North’ , he said he spent the first year just trying to figure out what kind of album he wanted to make. That’s where I am now, nearing the end of that period, thinking I know what kind of album I want to make. Now… how do you do it?

Well, you just start. So here it is: ‘Demon Slayer’. My friend Zach Djanikian played bass, acoustic guitar and mandolin, I played the other stuff. This is what I came here to do, keep a running diary of the music I’ve been working on. I’m trying to post a different song every week, whether it’s a cover or an obscurity or something new, and so far so good. It is rewarding to make yourself work every day on music, make yourself cobble a song into a working mix once a week. It’s been good for the mind and soul. I want to keep building this Substack to the point where it begins to tell a story, where you can see the links from one month to the next, where the music is going. I’m looking forward to running out of ideas, but I feel like that is far in the distance. Not a humble brag, I just have a lot of unfinished business. Been doing this a long time. Starting to write a song, leaving it for later, forgetting about it. They build up like unread emails. Yes, some of it is junk mail that I send to myself, though there is also a school of thought that God don’t make junk.

For those wondering why I’m not focusing on another New Pornographers record? All I can say right now is: I got you.