A couple weeks ago, I played with Shaimus at the CD release party for our new album, The Sad Thing Is, We Like It Here. The show was great fun—sold out crowd, solid performance, giveaways, videos, and plenty of other good stuff. But above all, it was a celebration marking the culmination of well over a year of hard work.

When all is said and done, this album was about three years in the making. The earliest songs were written and honed during our 2006 summer West Coast tour, including “Turn the Other Way,” “Interview,” and embryonic versions of “Don’t Want the Story” and “While We’re Young.” “Heads or Tails” was written during a time when Phil, Johannes and I were playing acoustic shows in L.A. while Dave and Cam finished up school on the other side of the country. “Tie You Down” was a last second addition that practically didn’t even make it on the album, and recording was pushed back a couple weeks just so we could finish it; good thing, too, as that turned out to be one of the best and most popular songs on the record.

That was around late October/early November of 2007. We tracked all of Cam’s drums in our old Van Nuys rehearsal space that December; imagine his impatience having recorded almost all of his parts over a year before the album would even come out. We followed this with laying down roughly finished versions of five of the strongest tracks which would be used for our demo. Our demo was sorely in need of an update, since the band’s sound had developed so much from our first album that it didn’t accurately represent us anymore. These new songs were far more illustrative of the “Shaimus sound” as it had come to be over the past couple years—a more cohesive, collaborative band effort with more energy and focus than Paper Sun (not to say there isn’t good material on that CD).

We took a brief break from recording after that. Trying to throw high-quality recordings together at a breakneck pace while contending with often-miserable day jobs was very taxing on all of us. During this break, we made a music video for “Turn the Other Way” with Adam Kerpelman. Not only did we feel like the song was a good choice for a single, but its theme of 9 to 5 frustration resonated with all of us. Oh, and of course it gave us an awesome excuse to smash the shit out of some office equipment.

Once summer 2008 rolled around we were antsy to finish what we’d started. We finished up guitars for the remaining five songs in our new West L.A. rehearsal space, recorded real piano in some recording studios to replace the samples that were used on the demo, and got final takes of all vocals, auxiliary percussion, and other odds and ends (mostly recorded in bedroom closets). Finally, Johannes busted his ass mixing the entire thing after it was all edited properly, Phil put the final touches on the artwork, we sent it off to get mastered and replicated, and then sat back and breathed a giant, collective sigh of relief. Oh, and Phil made a music video with a Powershot camera in his underwear.

This album represents a lot of blood, sweat, tears and calluses, and I think it turned out great. It’s certainly the best thing I’ve been a part of musically, and I put so much of myself into it that I can’t help but be nothing but proud. So, get more of a sense of the process of making this record with the next video, take a listen to the samples below and consider buying it. Now is the time for us to spread the word about all our hard work, and you can help!

Available from www.shaimus.com

Also available on