Here's one of the tunes we've were working on for the next "official" record. It seemed to tie all these singles together into an album, so we went ahead and finished it this month. Sneak peak at how the next one will sound. Everything is live except the obnoxiously loud overdubbed guitars. On a lot of tracks that we record in the summer there are audible crickets/cicadas audible on the quiet tracks. Not this one. The insects in the intro are actually a Hammond organ with a single drawbar setting running through a Mooger Fooger -- using a random oscillation to create the pulse. If you listen hard. you can hear it actually changing with the key of the song. Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen. Stay sane. -- TTS

A day to write, two to record, three weeks to mix... Printed the lyrics this time.

What began as a fleeting, recreational psychosis addressing our cosmic slavery to the celestial pull, got stuck that way, with the addition of a horn section that went completely bananas -- thus making strange sense of the whole thing. Guest starring: TTS Drummer Emeritus Thomas Mimikakis is on the skins on this one, which was started back in 2009. The upright bass that comes in is played by Birmingham's own Van Hollingsworth of the Magic Math. Horns are arranged, of course, by Chad Fisher.

This one is a bossa nova type thing about world-worthiness and lawn care and sex magick. Chad Fisher arranged and played the trombones.

Blues? Country? Whatever...

All-electric-guitars track. Not many of these from Through the Sparks. Short number, less than three minutes. Short song always means a long title. The Leslie-sounding guitar is actually running through a Hammond-organ vibrato. Most every guitar in the house took a crack at this one.

Here's one we've been meaning to finish for a long time. Started writing it a couple years back and gave it a fresh recording this week. Takes place in a hunting lodge and changes scenes to the site of a medieval drawing and quartering of the condemned. A third verse seemed superfluous... so the end is party-time for organ and harmonica, so to speak.

What sounds like a ukulele is actually a guitar. What sounds like a guitar is actually a ukulele. What sounds like a free piano with dead bass keys that require you to play them as if you were angrily squashing ants with your index finger is just that.

Real studio-ish one here. Started out as a little acoustic guitar with vocal and harmonica thing. Deconstructed. Not sure how we got the electric guitar to do that fireworks thing in the break. But, it involved a red, white and blue Gibson SG, a tremolo bar and a wad of fishing line with violin-bow rosin on it.

The Laughter and Lulls... this is the studio version we just finished. The big gliss in the verse is an autoharp with tape delay paired with a Lowery organ.

Newly remastered. So it'll sound right along with the other tracks in this collection.

Never made it to an album. Must've cut ti eight different times, the same way in different places and mixed it 100 times, re-cutting everything in a Sisyphean axe-handle replacement cycle. Here is where it was left.