Less noise was the new way… now giving way to more noise. Acoustic guitar, cello, more nuance, less bravado. Two records later and still experimenting by searching for a comfortable place between nice and not so nice. Thinking this would be a good way to deliver a mood and a message without hammering it into your head à la Girls Against Boys and Soulside, our earlier projects, but still opting for swagger and braggadocio – can it work? Scott McCloud sings and plays acoustic guitar and Alexis Fleisig plays drums with some fancy europeans and some rough and ready americans. The first record, Failure American Style, released sometime in 2008 found extreme critical success in my mind and some limited friends. The new record, Heaven’s Alright, is sweeping the charts of my mind, soaring to number 3, at least. I have high hopes for it – we will see. Carefully planning the release of the first record to time perfectly with the great financial crash of 2008, it seemed appropriate to release the second record at a relatively quiet point when most people realized they didn’t have enough money or a job and the future of the music industry was looking exceptionally bleak. There was also a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, an 8.8 earthquake in Chile, a 6.9 earthquake in China, volcanic explosion of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, the blowout of the BP Deepwater Horizon well and the bailout of Ireland and Greece, among other things. Hell of a year.