Bow + Arrow - Mathmatics Is The Study Of History

So, it took a while to record, and a long time to release in any fashion, but Bow + Arrow recorded a full-length album in 2008. It got a little bit of press, although we did little to promote it or attempt to get it released by any labels. By the time we were ready to put it out the band was already on a dramatic down-swing. One of the best things written about it was by Eric at The Stranger, ultimately seeing it as a timely and relevant return to the earnest days of DIY-spirited post-"revolution summer" emocore that prevailed in the days before corporations, eyeliner, and hair gel defined how people saw "emo" or current hardcore.

More than anything, I feel like this album represents the general undercurrent of the personal dynamics of the band in its history; the tension between half of the band wanting to write pop songs, while the other half wanting to be a hardcore band, while pretty much everyone agreed that we wanted to be playful and weird through the whole process. As far as the content and meaning behind our songs, we were equally as divided - much like the lyrical split between Ian Mackaye and Guy Piccitto in Fugazi (Ian generally not mincing words and being direct and blatant with his politics, while Guy was more abstract and less declarative), we tended to not want make grandiose political statements or wear our hearts on our sleeves, yet at the same time we didn't want to be too high-minded or aloof to the point of meaninglessness. Ultimately we ended up writing songs that reflected and spoke of the experiences of our closest friends, stylistically reflecting the records that we listened to together, and singing about the goofy art that we were surrounded by. One of my favorite moments of our songs lyrically was on "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," where Jay laments dramatically about a friend who committed suicide, while Lucas relates a piece of graffiti that our friend Clark put up everywhere - "these are truly the years of hair", insisting that the years of hair reflect the moments of awkward growth that we seem to be completely incapable of controlling are compounded by forcing religion down kids throats ("the years of hair, bastardized by faith").

A lot of this album has a lot of significance for me, and I could go on telling long-winded stories about each song, but mostly I'm sad that we never did hardly anything to get these songs into the open for people to listen to. Instead we have CDRs packed in boxes, probably never to see the light of day again. C'est la vie!

Thanks should definitely go to Sabory, who played cello on "Sweaty Kids Cutting Loose", Jeff McNulty who recorded the whole thing at The Vera Project, Jon Manning for doing the amazing photoshoot that was supposed to be in big gate-fold album artwork, and all the friends who we got to sing gang-vocals (like yelling "GOLF!" on Harbor Stories).

Recommended songs: Nick Watter, Harbor Stories, Repatch, Sweaty Kids Cutting Loose, We Bricklayers (I guess), Accessing The Uninteresting, and The Masses.







download the full album, buddies!