What to Do About Them | ||||
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EP by Swirlies | ||||
Released | 1992 | |||
Recorded | 1991–1992 | |||
Studio | Fort Apache Studios, Q Division Studios, MIT | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 22:28 | |||
Label | Taang! | |||
Producer | Swirlies | |||
Swirlies chronology | ||||
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What to Do About Them is a 1992 EP by Boston indie rock band Swirlies. It was Swirlies' first release for Taang! Records and documents the band's early material recorded in 1991 and 1992. The album is mostly made up of songs selected from the their three previous 7" records, as well as previously unreleased material.
Swirlies recorded the songs on What to Do About Them in multiple sessions on three different recording formats: Three songs were taken from the group's "Didn't Understand" single, recorded on 8-track reel-to-reel in guitarist Damon Tutunjian's Mission Hill apartment with drum parts recorded at M.I.T. by WMBR DJ John McGee. Two more songs were recorded at Fort Apache Studios by sound engineer Tim O'Heir and mixed at Q Division Studios by Rich Costey, with whom the band would continue to work for over a decade. The album's other songs were created on a 4-track cassette recorder by Tutunjian at home.
The band sequenced the songs on What To Do About Them in a way that created an arc in fidelity—from studio to 8-track to 4-track to 8-track to studio, and so on—and linked songs with field recordings and non-sequiturial soundbites as transitions. The song "Tall Ships" opens the record by sampling a pack of feral dogs howling. "Her Life of Artistic Freedom" is a home recording of solo guitar and voice set to the beat of a skipping record. On vinyl releases, the song played out into a locked groove that ended the side of the record. The lo-fi track "Cousteau" is framed by bits of dialogue and magnetic tape noises, ending in a warbled demo recording of the band's song "Jeremy Parker," a studio version of which would appear on the next Swirlies release, Blonder Tongue Audio Baton.
The album shows the band's increasing penchant for alternate guitar tunings, with the earlier material in Swirlies' baseline half-step below standard tuning of D#/G#/C#/F#/A#/D# on both guitars. Tutunjian retunes his guitar on the home-recorded "Cousteau" to D#/F#/C#/F/G#/D#, to D#/F#/C#/F#/A#/A# to accompany Carmody's voice on "Chris R.," and even further afield to G/C/F/A#/D/G on "Tall Ships."