It’s a bit of a stretch to call this track-by-track breakdown a premiere. Boys Talking has been hanging around for at least 18 months on vinyl and CD and by direct download. Rather than surrender what he believes is his best collection of songs so far to the “digital abyss,” Will Dailey wanted his seventh album to percolate awhile here on earth. The Boston-based singer/songwriter had already spent the better part of two decades toying with mass-market success, recording for the majors as both a solo artist and leader of the sonically ambitious (think symphonies) rock outfit the Rivals.
For the self-released Boys Talking, Dailey returned to the indie roots of his self-funded 2004 debut, Goodbyeredbullet. It’s 10 songs were selected from nearly 80 tracks in varying condition, and overdubs were kept to a minimum, which accounts for its breathability and warmth. The LP’s diverse cast of characters includes longtime musical collaborator Dave Brophy, legendary Boston scenester Juliana Hatfield, much-decorated music-industry photographer Danny Clinch, Puerto Rican cuatrista and Emmy-nominated composer Fabiola Méndez, award-winning bilingual singer/songwriter Alisa Amador and others.
The results defy easy categorization—all bound together by stellar songwriting and propelled by imaginative arrangements and meticulous craftsmanship. Call it kaleidoscopic Americana for the post-Spotify age.
Dailey sifts through each track.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Make Another Me” (featuring Juliana Hatfield)
“What are we even doing in this digital abyss? Your thumbprint has been given away. You mailed your DNA to a lab you couldn’t find on a map. The algorithmic world has slipped under your thumb, cataloging your entire life. Your tastes, your vices, your triggers have been cataloged. Your loneliness has been monetized, your privacy drained—all for free. This realization may make you want to give up. Maybe that means letting go of the last drop of self and letting ‘them’ take all that data and build another ‘you.’ But imagine that you learn to love yourself through that second self. Then the tables turn. You assign email and laundry to this carbon copy, and you go out and fight in the revolution.”
2) “Send Some Energy”
“After one of the many national tragedies we’ve become acclimated to, I had a visceral reaction to more bland denial when we need profound action. More passive laziness when we’re in dire need of energy. Often when lost, I seek the sounds and wisdom of David Bowie. It’s been theorized on social media that when Bowie and Prince abandoned the physical plane, a rift opened in our reality. This is nonsense, of course. But as long as I’ve pretended, I’ve pretended to link my consciousness to Bowie’s—to access a piece of his energy as a commensal vassal in pursuit of understanding. To transcend my own tired patterns while drowning in the awareness of everything I don’t know. To cope.”
3) “One At A Time”
“Every fucking time, it’s the same thing. They’ve cornered the hero … dire circumstances via Hollywood machismo. We see ourselves in the hero. It doesn’t seem like he can make it out of the second act of this film. He’s out of bullets—finally. Then, one at a time, the goon squad attacks … a choreographed dance of incompetence benefiting the protagonist. Where did all these men learn to fight? What happened to them to make them so incompetent? They throw it all away because of an inability to work as a team. Turns out their story is a subplot tragedy of pain, loss and trauma. There’s a parent who couldn’t love. A buried hurt—abuse and stunted confidence. Their broken egos are attacking one at a time to find themselves in a physical pain commensurate with the emotional pain. We all do it in our own way—boys especially. The lone hero is a myth that makes it even worse. There’s no shooting or punching our way out of it. The violence just transfers the pain.”
4) “My Old Ride” (featuring Danny Clinch)
“Aside from ‘One At A Time,’ Boys Talking was recorded live in the studio with all the musicians in the same room—a luxury that sounds like it should be the norm. It’s not—see ‘Make Another Me.’ Humans being together is a luxury now—and it can feel like a coup. ‘My Old Ride’ was on the backburner of my mind. I presented the song in the studio to everyone while we were recording, fully expecting that they wouldn’t react and we’d skip it. The opposite happened. We started playing. The album version came from the third take, and it’s one of our favorites to play live now. I’ve heard it all over the radio. It was up for Grammy consideration (for Best Americana Roots Performance). I got to talk to Bruce Springsteen about it. It’s a fan favorite.”
5) “Hell Of A Drug”
“Not only do cults drain the soul, the pockets and the time of their victims, they’re a black hole to the communities and cultures where they operate—sucking up all our precious time and slowing down our quest for a better society for everyone. In all honesty, sometimes I’m jealous of cults … to get drunk off that blissful elixir and live safely in the pretend. Then the first believers to break from the cult get to be heroes, while we’ve been sounding alarms the whole time. That’s the thing with cults: You can’t break them from the outside. Deprogrammed voices are the final nail that splits the rock to show there was absolutely nothing of value inside. Must be a killer high.”
6) “After Your Love”
“For some, the chase is better than the arrival. Pining is fuel that’s happy to be spent on more pining. Had I not found this random guitar tuning—that I forgot to write down and painfully had to relearn after recording the song—I likely wouldn’t have stumbled on the path to this song and crafted this truth for myself. And maybe someone else, if I’m lucky. We measure in arrival, in stats, in spin counts and touchdowns. We fail to measure by the art of maintaining the chase, the beauty of being after it. That’s the thrill of the game. The chase is the heart of the rom-com, not the kiss before the credits. Chase is the feeling of recording live in the studio with the best musicians in the world, not pontificating about it later. Chase is process. Process is everything. Everything is love.”
7) “Tremble On Me”
“Boys Talking started as a meditation on grief before the album title was found. The chorus to this song arrived without asking and without yet knowing its meaning. I was, however, woefully aware that this album would be the first that a friend who passed would never hear and that an artist mentor who passed would never reflect upon. We tracked this without the verses because I couldn’t yet find my way to those truths still clouded by grief. But time heals wounds, and music is time. The benefit of tracking live and quickly is you can’t think too much. It was the music we were creating that allowed the space to look at a final text from my departed friend, who kept careful account of my path through sharing songs: “I’m checking out. Whatever you do I love.”
8) “Alright Already”
“Ugh. Does every song have to be about something? Can I just mingle in the vibe? Everything is enough. I’m enough already. You’re enough already. This song is enough already. All right?! I’ve been dumping my brain and my feelings this whole time, and I’m a touch exhausted. We deserve to feel complete and free from things we can’t define. I can’t name it, but I can feel it—that feeling is the meaning. This is the palette-cleanser on the album. It’s also the secret track that only exists on the physical release. Not everything can be explained, and not everything needs to belong to our digital abyss. Some things deserve to belong only to us. If you want to hear it, you’ll have to hold it in your hands.”
9) “How To Cry”
“Too many tears can drown. Not enough tears, and the dam will burst. Either extreme is usually benefiting the person(s) who oversaw and designed our emotional patterns. This song is a field manual. Emotional language is learned. With willingness, habits can be reformed slowly—more easily with someone who sees it with you. The patience needed is in the beats per minute on this one. The guitar solo at the end was a breakthrough in my own emotional ritual.”
10) “Sometimes The Night” (featuring Alisa Amador)
“We treated her horribly—everyone did. By ‘her,’ I mean anyone whose star we elevated and then destroyed for our entertainment. There’s more than one correct answer throughout time. This song is the soundtrack of her escape from the definition of self the world has saddled her with. The exit is the night—void of what illuminates every stained memory. There she can find and rebuild a version of herself that belongs only to her. We all still judge, but the night comes with a shield that protects any new freedom found.”
See Will Dailey live.
