LIAM HAYES MIRAGE GARAGE

DECORATED PEAR, 2018

A er plans for his big LA rock record go predictably awry, Hayes pivots the other way, making a solo album in a garage and releasing it on cassette. The songs remain fantastic

I had some contacts in LA, so I went out there to work out another record, entitled ‘Pink Sunglasses’. I got together with some people, we were developing the material, but again, balancing the creative and commercial just became very draining. I went out there with the intention of, ‘Maybe I can stay out here and do some more music for movies’, but all that stuff really went nowhere. So what I ended up doing was making Mirage Garage with Luther [Russell] in his garage in Pasadena. We had fun doing it, and basically the takeaway for me was, ‘Just focus on the music, don’t worry about making a big statement.’ We released it on cassette because the entry level for doing that is really easy. We made it this way, we’re gonna distribute it this way, and we’re not gonna get hung up about labels or shows or any of the other machinations that go along with making music in the commercial sphere.

At the time I wrote “Here In Hell”, I felt like a lot of the promises of technology and the networked world were not really making my life or my art better – it wasn’t freeing me from all the things I felt were problematic, as a musician. And I guess it was the idea of constantly being under surveillance, that everything we were doing was gonna be made into a cybernetic commodity that none of us were going to be remunerated for. At that point, my feeling was, ‘This is not for me.’ And the consequence of that was really a lot of isolation.

[Now] I’ve reached the point where I’m going to make art regardless because I don’t have a choice. If that means having it distributed in ways that I don’t have any control over, or make little or no money from, what can I do? I’m grateful for the other people who are making art that I enjoy too, so maybe that’s the trade.

A remastered version of More You Becomes You will be released by Weird Vacation on February 23