Chris Walla: Field Manual
Chris Walla‘s solo album is set for a release on January 29 via Barsuk Records, and information about the album is beginning to surface… in spite of the Homeland Security’s attempt to quiet his voice. Sing Again, the first single for Field Manual, has been released to the blogging community.
Field Manual comprises of twelve tracks of Walla performing nearly every instrument. Jason McGerr of Death Cab for Cutie tracked the drums for The Score, Geometry &c., Everyone Needs A Home, Our Plans Collapsing, Archer v. Light, and Kurt Dahle of The New Pornographers sat behind the kit for Saint Modesto.
The hard drive storing Chris Walla’s solo album was confiscated by US Homeland Security in October. Walla had been recording most of the album in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. The incident happened as Walla was traveling back into the US.
“You know what would would be great? If all the items seized in border searches were divvied up among the Senators to investigate. In my wildest dreams, my drive ends up on Arlen Specter’s desk in Washington, and he studies the files with surgical precision. And maybe my little songs tip him forever away from the fence, in either direction.” (Chris Walla remarked on Hall of Justice)
Chris Walla has posted twenty-four downloadable songs on Hall of Justice, “free of legal tangles.” The songs extend over the past twelve years as Walla wrote under his own name and Martin Youth Auxiliary, and found his feet as a producer and songwriter for Death Cab for Cutie. Of the twenty-four tracks, the only song that might have made it onto Field Manual is Connection & C, written in 1999, which may be the working title for Geometry &c. In Connection & C, he sings:
“If I don’t make my next connection, I’m surely drawing near the end. I don’t know when you think I’m going to have the chance to have a chance like this again. The way you move, connecting lines to threads and thoughts, to tread your path from what was in your head to what’s now closer to your pen. We proceed for now. Our present course of action seems to work somehow.”
Chris Walla – Connection & C (recorded Feb. 1999)
Outside of his solo work, Chris Walla is currently writing and recording with Death Cab for Cutie for their follow-up of the critically acclaimed and Grammy nominated Plans. Walla operates a recording studio in Portland, and has produced many artists, such as Tegan & Sara and The Decemberists.
Chris Walla – Field Manual tracklist:
Two Fifty
The Score
Sing Again
A Bird Is a Song
Geometry &c
Everyone Needs a Home
Everybody On
Our Plans, Collapsing
Archer v. Light
St. Modesto
It’s Unsustainable
Holes