Can't put it better than Bob put it on the Shinobu myspace: "About a year ago, while that cuddleberry Matthew Sex was on hiatus from being all metropolitan and crap in New York, and before that sage Jon Fu moved to Japan and lost 20 pounds, and before I moved to Japan and ate dog, and before the Roger Ebert of literature Mike started a blog and two other awesome bands, the four of us holed up in the Cuddle Space for a couple of weeks and recorded the 15 or so tunes that now make up our soon to be album, Strange Spring Air. Aside from one or two of them, every song was pretty much written and recorded on the spot. This led to what I consider some of our most unquestionably awesome stuff (and, I might add, some of our most questionably awesome stuff too)."

At the time of writing this Matt is living in Brooklyn, Bob and Jon are both teaching English in Japan, and I am in a new band in San Jose and considering the many daunting options for living the rest of my life. On all of our previous albums the songs were essentially written at home by me and brought to the band complete. On this album we wrote all together, often coming up with ideas as a group, and sometimes writing in a more federalist way--Bob wrote and sang on the Cat song, Matt wrote the music to Amor Fati, Jon wrote the lyrics to Tiger!, etc etc. So at the time when we are the furthest apart we are also writing the most as a unit. Suffice to say, there are odd things afoot in the strange spring air.

I hope that the album speaks for itself. I think its the best one we've done, as well as the most representative of where we've been and where we might be going...maybe. It was also the most fun to make. But in the end it is what it is--a nearly improvised collection of songs written by four friends. Hopefully that comes across more than questions of whether or not this is a punk album, an indie album, an album about lyrics, or an album about music. It's an album about friends. And the Moustache King.

Thanks to Jeff and everyone else in Bomb the Music Industry for helping us out (and especially to John for playing drums with us and doing a fantastic job). Thanks to Doug for playing with us inbetween the Jo(h)ns. Thanks to everyone who has helped us to get a show and to everyone who didn't mind when we hardly brought anyone to those shows. Thanks to all those who let us stay at their place instead of making us sleep in the van. Thanks to the wonderful people and bands we have toured with over the years: Adam Pasion, Jason Jason, Keyboard, Pteradon, I Sing the Body Electric, and Bomb the Music Industry. Thanks to Tyler Kogura, Avi Ehrlich, Jeff Walsh, Eric Fanali, Mike Park, Skylar Suorez, and Jeff Rosenstock again for all believing that we can or might make good music when very few people would give us the time of day. And thanks to our families for putting up with this quixotic quest to play music the way we think it should be played, instead of a way that will win fans, money, girls or critical acclaim. Thank you.

-Mike
5 January 2009