New Album
The Curse of You

this
fightin’
and
hurtin’
each
other’s
wrong

About Curses

Curse: n., an appeal to some supernatural power to inflict evil on someone or some group;  an evil spell;  a severe affliction;  something causing misery or death;  a profane or obscene expression usually of surprise or anger.

Image by victoriaintheworld is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Curses were feared by us before we knew what they were called. In some societies, the “wicked woman” would curse us, until we found out they were so dubbed by wicked men and priests. Weather can be a curse, as can bad luck, or a series of unfortunate events may be attributed to it. Even so, we hardly worry about curses anymore. We sometimes even say a blessing and a curse is the same thing. In America, cursing is just swearing.

But there’s another sort of curse. It’s bigger, nihilistic, dystopian. A curse that’s like an obsession or an addiction, a passionate fascination. We know it might be bad for us, but we can’t tear ourselves away. It’s all-encompassing, and two-faced. Love can be one of these. Art, another. And to our planet, it’s us. This is the sort of curse where hate and love are intertwined, where death shadows life, where bringing something closer, too close, just to see it better, kills it.

About Chased

It began as a project to pass time in 2008, when the world felt like it was changing. Obama was US President, an Australian Prime Minister said Sorry, and the earth was under the fist of the GFC. Returning from a long trip overseas, I changed careers; moved to Brisbane. I was living on my own for the first time in a while before the family moved too, and reignited a younger interest in writing, playing, and recording original songs. I didn’t have a lot to ‘say’, but I knew I had the songs in me, and now just had to learn how to record, mix, and engineer them. Chased was the name I liked for the recording project – the word and its homonym – and it stuck.

Another Lover

By 2009 I had a Mac and a DAW (digital audio workstation) a few guitars, and a cheap mic. The debut album Another Lover was released in 2011 on SoundCloud. It’s patchy, a bit overblown, but it was fun to make. A series of single recordings followed, including exercises for a songwriting course I joined, reactions to world events, demos, vague ideas, experiments.

Then work got in the way, life.

Big End

Until 2013, when I convened with 2, then 3, then 4 friends to create the garage/party band Big End. I had to learn how to write and arrange for a full band now, how to incorporate ideas that occurred in the moment, abandon control. Released in 2015, hear our album Creatures on Spotify or iTunes, or buy it cheap at bandcamp. There’s a couple of Big End videos I made to check out, too.

Listen

bandcamp

spotify

Watch

youtube

Respect to my beloved bandmates from Big End: Steve McInnes (Drums), John Mobbs (Guitar, Bass), Tim Morris (Keys, Guitar), and Paul Collis (Guitar, Bass). The album was recorded, mixed, and engineered by Tim in Brisbane in 2015, with almost all songs by me, and vocals by almost all of us. Big End are currently on hiatus.

you expect attention, but,
in the suburbs
we think slow

About the new album

Front cover

The Curse of You is ten new songs written and recorded over the Winter and Spring of two thousand and nineteen and the Autumn of twenty-twenty.

Something’s up in the world of this album. Something seems off. Can you sense it? Do you see the signs?

Available for listening at Soundcloud and bandcamp.

All cover art and track art by me. There will be no live performances or appearances.

Back cover

The Curse of You is a non-prog-rock low-concept concept album. It’s guitar music! All songs are by me, but I’ve collaborated with Kirste Grant, John Mobbs, and Melissa Wilcox on this one. John also co-wrote Love Like A River. Thanks to you all. For this project, Chased are:

Stephen//vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, mandolin, keyboards, drums programming
Kirste//vocals, keyboards, added arrangements for Love Like A River, Dud Revolution, Rally Round the Shield, Boys, and The Curse of You
John//vocals on Rally Round the Shield, Boys
Melissa//vocals on The Curse of You

Thanks also to John, Paul, Melissa, Wayne Chambers, Chris Curnow & especially Dave Weir and Kirste Grant, who all listened and gave feedback on earlier versions of these songs. I am an amateur musician and songwriter and beginner engineer still trying to make some sense out of it all, but without these few avid supporters, there’d be silence.