gerard way: hesitant alien

Love this album, but haven't listened to it in a while. Voted "How It's Going to Be" just off the top of my head. I was in so love with that cheesy synth solo.

this album gets better every time i listen to it, which motivated me to search for its thread but it turns out we talked about this record exclusively in an mcr thread

anyway i could vote for at least five of these lol

probably "maya the psychic"

There isn't a song on here I don't like.

I haven't checked out his Doom Patrol comic or any of the other Young Animal stuff. It seems like that's just what he's up to these days though? I've been hoping for another solo record from him for a while.

what a great record

Yep this is the best record.

My picks would be "Brother" which I always have to play 3 times in a row, or "How It's Going To Be" (YES to the synth solo) or "Maya The Psychic".

Could vote for almost anything, but wanna raise some support for the big dumb obvious vaseline'n'glitter-smeared "No Shows" & "Action Cat".

i had a thought last night that this record's ambitions seem parallel to stp's tiny music 20 years later, i.e. trying to retrofit glam onto '90s rock forms (here it's shoegaze ("action cat"), the pixies ("zero zero," "juarez"), pulp ("drugstore perfume")) but it's way stronger and more confident about it.

had to go for "Millions"

not sure about his solo music, and i was never a my chemical romance fan. but this guy's comics are pretty damn great. he's currently writing the reboot of dc's doom patrol. the first issue's cover was an homage to vu & nico, but with a gyro. sticker and everything.

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5858/67/original/640.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Action Cat" is the one I keep putting on playlists, so that. Good album!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

new song alert

Where? Don't see anything in the expected spots.

i think it was mistagged on spotify?? or there was a song that came out last year named "into the cave we wander" that's brand new to me

oh i guess it was from record store day!

yeah I expect he's probably busy with that whole netflix thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=TaxHIYOzMUQ

really wish this could have scored a Hill House credit sequence

oh man this song rules, i need another gerard solo record IMMEDIATELY

another single out today, co-written by Ray Toro among others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvWVWPfCAfI

btw i love this song

more slinky britpop songs with flute please

Just caught up on the two recent tunes, glad he's back to writing songs. They're both good!

I love the flute on Germs. Its whole vibe is more chill than he usually is, he wears it well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quKUSaPi9E

album of the year 2019

he's gonna have a big year huh

man, ILM had NO time for MCR, all the threads are like 20 posts

it's criminal. they placed remarkably low in the emo poll as well

Felt like MCR got better w/every album (and would include Hesitant Alien in that trajectory).

Everything about this family is insane. Don't trust us? Watch the official trailer now. The Umbrella Academy premieres February 15. pic.twitter.com/vJvxhebCqR

— Umbrella Academy (@UmbrellaAcad) January 24, 2019

so this looks... great. and that's gerard way and ray toro covering "hazy shade of winter" in the background

background, hell...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTCrqXpKHec&feature=youtu.be

er

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTCrqXpKHec

this would have slotted in nicely on Hesitant Alien imo

https://youtu.be/e425i81YVLc

very nice, very fuzzy

all this gerard way/mcr action has made me somewhat excited about umbrella academy season 2, and I didn’t even like the first one that much.

same, hope it comes together this time. some improved dialogue would really really help

He's really starting to look like a younger Jeff Tweedy

https://loudwire.com/doug-mckean-engineer-my-chemical-romance-producer-dead-54/

I missed this news when it hit last week, but Doug McKean died of a brain hemorrhage in late June. He had been a longtime engineer for the band, and produced all of Gerard's solo stuff as well as the new MCR single. R.I.P.

Here's a note that Gerard wrote about Doug from one of his soundcloud songs.

https://soundcloud.com/gerardway/phoning-it-in

Phoning It In. I’ve always loved the phrase and I was just inspired to write a song with it. To keep in spirit with the title of the song, I made sure not to try too hard on any one element. I wrote the riff quickly, wrote the lyrics quickly, we got the guitar sound quickly, and there was no overthinking or really changing anything. My only complaint about it is that I think it is a little too fast, so it forces me to sing harder to keep up, and it doesn’t fully sound like I’m phoning in the vocals. So I thought about slowing it down and delivering a more laid back vocal take. Just ever so slightly. I played the guitar, sang, No bass yet. Doug programmed the drums. Every once in a while we will have someone play drums on the songs, but usually only when we are finishing something for release. Otherwise, all the drums in the demos are programmed by Doug, and I think he does a really good job of making them sound kind of real and natural. I get attached to them. All of Hesitant Alien started as demos with programmed drums by Doug. He and I have a cool relationship, and have evolved together over the years since he engineered Black Parade, Danger Days, and engineered and produced Hesitant Alien. We work in the same space, the studio at my house, called Milk Friends. I just let him have the space I’m not using and he brought in all of his gear and works on various projects, recording, and mixes, and I would be in the other room, the office, writing comics. And every so often, when neither of us is too busy, we record things. I like sharing artistic spaces with people, especially Doug. It’s nice to have a friend that can record you when you have an idea, because I’m terrible at recording and I barely even know how to use Garage Band. So all the singles you have gotten from me over the last couple of years have been done with Doug and I, and then various musicians who would replace certain things, making them real, and sound better.

this album is so important to me

It's a beautiful, rockin' record, and it still holds up. I'm just sad that we never got a proper follow-up.

This record should’ve been huge (I know that’s true of many records)

Perfect album

i really love "Don't Try", which was left off HA but released later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usEHacWtR6o

important tip from youtube comments: Put play speed at 1.25x it sounds like a MCR song