04/26/2024
New release incoming from ITG Presents alum Micah Schnabel Music! Now if you'll indulge me, I have a few words that I'd like to say about his upcoming album, "The Clown Watches The Clock" before it releases.
A lot of you may not know this, but the ITG Presents concert series grew out of a CD Club that I started for my family during the pandemic. One of our first club albums was Micah's "The Teenage Years of the 21st Century," and that album remains one of my all-time favorite no-skip albums. It's truly a masterwork. I've been incredibly lucky to get to hear "The Clown Watches The Clock" already, and I can tell you that it's already vying with Teenage Years for the top Micah Schnabel Album spot in my heart! In a lot of ways, this new album really feels like a continuation of that perfect-to-me record, touching on a lot of the same themes as Micah holds his microscope up to society to explore modern life in a world that's more connected than ever but somehow still caught up in the throes of isolation while dealing with all the foibles of late-stage capitalism.
So many of the tracks on this album are already favorites of ours. We've been really lucky to spend a lot of time with Micah and his partner Vanessa over the last few years, and so most of this album feels very familiar to us already, despite the fact that it hasn't even released yet. We've been super lucky to watch these new songbabies evolve and grow up, and I personally cannot wait for you all to hear them because not only are they incredibly well composed pieces of music, but I think the narrative that Micah is trying to tell and the feelings he is exploring through this record are so, so important and so incredibly illuminative of this shared human experience we're all having as we try not just simply to survive, but to thrive and to blossom. The seeds of this album have been planted deeply within my heart, and I'm so happy that they too are about to blossom; I can't wait for them to grow and to spread through this world when the album releases next month.
If you attended our ITG Presents show with Micah, some of these songs may be familiar to you already. Maybe you remember singing along to the infectious choruses of "Christian Band" or "Real Estate," or you recall that time a song about a broken dryer at the laundromat nearly made you cry with the lyric "we swallow up these sorrows, try again tomorrow, with nothing but our lives on the line" (which might just be the most powerful single line Micah has written, in my opinion, since "Death Defying Feats"). Once again, Micah has written an album that takes in all the highs and all the lows of modern life, mixes them seamlessly, and provides us a whirlwind of emotions that captures the extremes of hope and hopelessness and will make you rejoice, laugh, cry, and spend a moment in quiet introspection all in under an hour of your time.
I know I'm being a little wordy here, but I just want to gush about this album so much. Brevity is the soul of prose, though, and you might fairly ask "so Seth, what's your point?" Well, before I go, I'd like to say a little something about hoping that you'll pre-order this amazing piece of work once orders open up on May 3rd. Pre-orders are so important at this level, and this is exactly the kind of album the world needs right now. Micah is exactly the kind of person the world needs right now; both he and the album are soft but brave, kind but critical, and realistic but also optimistic about the potential the future still can hold. If you feel so inclined, please do support this amazing, creative, and oh-so talented human being and his new opus. I love this album almost as much as I love him, and that's saying a lot! So please take this as a 10/10 must-buy recommendation/review, if my take holds any weight with you. It is truly another perfect album in my book, and might just be even stronger than Teenage Years. And hey, while you're at it, maybe pick up a copy of the fantastic book that goes along with this album, which is already available for purchase; much like this upcoming album, I promise that it won't disappoint!
Thanks, as always, for listening - and thank you Micah for sharing this little piece of your soul with us!
-S
My new record “The Clown Watches The Clock” comes out May 15th. It shares a title with my second novel that came out in November of 2023. The two pieces were written simultaneously over the course of the pandemic and together they make up a single snapshot of a point in time in my life where I was struggling and then learning to embrace the complete and total loss of hope.
Vinyl and CD orders begins May 3rd via my Bandcamp page. The Clown Watches The Clock” The Record is out everywhere May 15th. The book is currently stocked and shipping via my home office. Any support or sharing of information is greatly appreciated as I have no label, management, or distribution, which makes you(!) the international distribution arm and head of PR at Micah Schnabel Inc. Thank you for your time and attention and I can’t wait to share this record with you.
Clown Costume painting by Vanessa Jean Speckman
Graphic Design, layout, and image by Joe Maiocco
