Pick on Someone Your Own Size

I've been writing and recording music for nearly 2 decades, and nothing I have released to the public thus far has been quite as fulfilling to create as the latest Little Cricket EP, Pick on Someone Your Own Size. This concept album is different from my previously released content in multiple ways. First, and most notably, it features real drum performances, as opposed to the programmed software drums that have characterized much of my music up to this point. Pick on Someone Your Own Size is also the first Little Cricket release to feature artwork by Baltimore illustrator Chris Shiner, who previously contributed artwork for another Cricket Records release, Checking's 2020 EP, Fingers. Chris' ability to craft rich and powerful imagery that echoes the themes that run through the record has transformed it into much more than just 9 minutes of sound; it's a seamless union of the audible and the visual, a multi-faceted artistic experience.

Another aspect of this release that makes it unique is its lyrical content. I've always taken an approach to writing that puts the music before the lyrics, a Mad Libs-style process of using whichever words sound the best, even if they don't make sense. Occasionally, I've been able to manipulate those words into some semblance of continuity, but for the most part, the musical content has taken precedence. Maybe it's a symptom of age, but abstract ideas have lately become more important to me than ever, especially as the world around me traverses a landscape of unprecedented events, from the 2016 American election to the global pandemic of 2020. It would seem wrong at this point to make music for music's sake. The songs on Pick on Someone Your Own Size all deal with the ethics of power disparity, to one degree or another. We live in a world where oppressors are often sold as victims, and the victim is often described as the oppressor. The fact is that these situations are almost always more complicated and nuanced than powerful people would have you believe. Going against the grain of traditional narratives, Pick on Someone Your Own Size tries to take a closer look at 3 obscure, but very real, historical figures and grapple with the complexities of the ethical dilemmas in which they found themselves. Hints are dropped along the way that might reveal their identities, but what's important are the concepts magnified by their imagined perspectives. For the record, the music is as important to me as ever, and hopefully, it serves the lyrical content well. Pick on Someone Your Own Size is available now on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and wherever else the kids are streaming music from these days. Check it out now, and be sure to let me know what you think!