At long last, Free Rock has made it back into the same room to record! The period following Gone Wild and the recording of our remote-LP New Threads is Dead was a dark time with everyone isolated due to the ongoing pandemic, and it felt so victorious to emerge from the hellfire a stronger, tighter, and better band than before. The new vibes are instantly apparent on the album's opener "On the Border," the first song we recorded live in a room together since the tracks for Gone Wild in the summer of 2020, and I feel like you can hear our smiles through the microphones. Many of these songs have been kicking around for while- Justin's had "In My Nature" for years, and we tried to stick it on New Threads is Dead but it didn't quite work. "Do What Ya Want" I wrote for the album that turned into Gone Wild, "Fantastic!" was written during the NTiD cycle for my would-be solo album, and Justin's had "Say Goodbye to Saigon" since we were working in the Townhouse back in the New Threads days. "Recliner" and "Second Wind" I wrote in the summer of 2021 after moving into my new place. Justin and I wrote "On The Border" in pieces a few weeks later. This album feels like a greatest hits for us, an excuse to go to any corner of the sonic ocean that we could reach. What started as a bedroom-rock album evolved into a jam-band monster, an uncontrollable beast that's developed a mind and direction of its own. We even had Nick in the room with us for some of the sessions, which certainly helped lead to the creation of the unforgivingly detailed cover piece "The Garden of Udder Delights," now our second LP together. The album takes Free Rock to new depths with our exploration of synthesizers, tape recording techniques, and in-studio improvisation, things we had only dabbled with on previous recordings. But it also bears the most similarities to our first record, something that I think is actually quite appropriate. It's the dawn of a new era.

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- Jacob