Track-by-Track / Sinkcharmer – Radical Luck
Track-by-Track / Sinkcharmer – Radical Luck

Track-by-Track / Sinkcharmer – Radical Luck

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Handing over the mic to artists/musicians who break down their new albums track by track/share the thought process behind the creation. Today we’ll hear from Ballston Spa, NY Paul Coleman (Haley Moley, Architrave) aka Sinkcharmer.


I have 2 kinds of records…There are the ones I set out to make with some sort of thread or vague vision and then there are the ones that are a result of me just making songs here and there and then trying to weave them together into a coherent record. This is definitely of the latter type. I started this record during the pandemic after hanging up Sinkcharmer for a while. One of my bands (Haley Moley) was not meeting or playing and my other band with my wife Jen (Architrave) was active, but really more of her outlet/production. This gave me room to make some new tracks. Oh and a brief explanation of the title. Radical Luck was a track by Gobstopper (Jen Godfrey and Jef Czekaj) from a comp that came out of my college radio station (https://youtu.be/hIHQwWMxxjA?t=1375). Both Jen and Jef were in an earlier live band incarnation of Sinkcharmer in the early 00’s. In addition to loving this song, I saw this as a loving call out to an earlier version of the band, in part because I’ve been thinking of turning this back into a band and less of a one-person show. On to the tracks!

The Ark – When sequencing the record, Jen made it clear that this should be the kickoff. It was her favorite track on the record and one that provoked an emotional response in her. My only thought going into writing this was that I wanted layered drone chords that went throughout it…I think those are part of the emotional pull in a musical sense. This song is pretty transparently about how the pandemic ends and the feelings I have around it. There’s a vagueness to the “end” that’s in opposition to the sharp beginning. I think many of us remember how quickly everything shut down, but the climb out is far more incremental.

Season Six Script Planning Meeting – Wrote the bones of this one while on a mid-pandemic vacation on the shores of Lake Ontario. All the guitars are actually Mandolin and it was always intended to be a loose Stephen Malkmus-ish track. Lyrics came later and were an attempt at telling the story of a TV show going off the rails. The truth is I watch very little TV, so if I depicted anything that happened in real life, it’s purely coincidental. I was also taking inspiration from Frank Boscoe who is one of the finest storytellers in musical form that I know (I have the privilege of being in his new band, the Ekphrastics) https://ekphrastics.bandcamp.com/track/ghost-apples-rehearsal-version.

Box On The Porch – This song came out of a jam (with myself) and it shows. In the case of this one I wanted something that felt vaguely middle eastern. The lyrics came when I received a box of my mom’s photos from my stepdad’s son after my mom moved back up (that’s another crazy pandemic story). The box had broken glass in it and it got me musing on the people in the pictures that I knew as well as the people in the pictures I didn’t know but was connected to.

Chaotic Dreams – Another vacation song though you wouldn’t know it. We were deep in the Adirondacks with my in-laws this past August. They were in the process of selling their house and it was a good opportunity for them to be away while the realtors showed their house. One morning they got a call from the realtors that someone was in the house on the couch and claiming to be a relative. Turns out he was a local meth head that had seen the realty sign and decided that he lived there. This song is my musing on that.

Dwell – This was also written the same week as Chaotic Dreams. Sonically I initially envisioned this a a bit of a Suicide track (especially the beat).I was leaning heavily into distortion on this one though I wound up scaling that back a bit. This song is definitely self-critical and dark in a purposefully vague way. Gonna stay vague on that. I will say I’m proud of the refrain at the end “I feel like myself tonight and I’m not sure that’s alright” because it feels like something that could be a universal for anyone who’s experienced imposter syndrome.

Innovation – This is a Madeline Darby cover (https://madelinedarby.bandcamp.com/track/innovation). This was originally made for a locals covering locals comp (https://ahduckrecords.bandcamp.com/track/innovation-madeline-darby-cover). The original has a weirder more “Canned Heat” vocal delivery. I wound up changing that and a few minor things to make it fit into this album a bit better. I truly love Madeline Darby’s output and find her approach to noise/music pretty inspirational. I was also very fortunate to have her participate in a Sinkcharmer performance earlier in the year!

Kept – Whoa…gimme indie rock? When I wasn’t thinking about performing songs I was writing I made this to see if I could make a “rock” track. Another song about getting old/imposter syndrome. One of a pair of “rock” songs. A future direction? Who knows.

Stochastic Reality – Sometimes I write songs that in retrospect seem a little preachy. This might be one of those songs. This song was primarily done with the Koala app using the same approach I took on the Mount Mole – Flee Marker EP (https://mountmole.bandcamp.com/album/flee-marker)…except that I spent time, you know, writing lyrics and arranging the song. This song’s pretty clearly about how our perceptions are molded and twisted by advertising and social media…and yeah I’ve never stopped or truly disengaged. You probably got to this article by clicking a link that I or others shared. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Terrible Protector – The other “Sebadoh” song on this record. This was probably the first track I wrote/recorded in this set of songs. At the beginning of the pandemic, I had to take my parents car away because they were getting lost and could remember that we were in the midst of a health crisis. I would go over to their place every day once this happened and bring groceries and take them for an hour long ride around Saratoga Lake. I grew to enjoy it, but there were moments where they got angry and confused about it. This song is about all of that.

Everyone’s Always Right on the Internet – This might be the most direct song on the record and probably falls into the “preachy” category. It’s basically about internet trolls and is kind of a sarcastic “go ahead asshole” take on them. I definitely dip my toe into the jammy sid


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