Last Night

Though Marin County hardly suffers from dynamic weather to the degree of, say, the East Coast, things can get pretty murky and dark. Last year around this time, Rebecca and I were nearly done with the R/R Coseboom album, a project taken on largely to pass the late fall and winter doldrums and maybe reflect a little bit of that time of year.

This year, Halou feels more vibrant and we have begun working on our next album in earnest. I have gone into some of the work that we’ve done so far on this blog, but I expect to really get into things right around the beginning of next year.

Last night, though, we got together for dinner and a little bit of recording and rehearsal. Rebecca – who can always be counted on to brighten a table with her face and her fare – served an elegant mushroom soup with fresh chantrelles, cannelloni stuffed with smoked cherries and Swiss chard (then topped with parsnip cream), and I-Li’s recipe for Moo-less chocolate cake. Almost more decadence than you should be allowed to fit into one sentence – or onto one table, but we found a way.

It was a good night for wine, too, actually. With the mushroom soup, we had the 2004 Ramey Russian River Chardonnay – a current favorite that Rebecca and I also had this Thanksgiving. With the cannelloni we drank the new Parallel Cabernet, perhaps my favorite red of the moment. To get us through the recording, we hurt a bottle of Valdez Rockpile Zinfandel – the new wine that the Spectator, Chronicle, etc. keep talking about. Lives up to the hype, no question.

We used the rehearsal to further work out the newer songs and tighten ourselves up on the older ones. ‘Albatross’ is already a new live favorite of mine with its tremolo guitar rakes and moog modulating. Also, ‘It Will All Make Sense In The Morning’ now makes a lot more sense to all of us as we were sort of confused about how to arrange it.

I’ve got much work to do on several other demos laying around. Next up, I’ve got this ‘Stoplights’ track staring at me from a lonely folder in a remote corner of an audio drive…

Ryan