Hyphenated-man
album by Mike Watt
Hyphenated-man (stylized in all lowercase) is the fourth solo album by Mike Watt, and the first full-length recording he made under his own name since parting with Columbia Records in 2005. Initially released in Japan by Parabolica Records in October 2010, the album was released in the rest of the world on clenchedwrench, an independent record label newly founded by Watt. He is accompanied on the album by his Mike Watt + The Missingmen bandmates, guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales.
Writing and recording
The album is a loose concept album (Watt refers to it as his third "punk opera") of thirty short songs, all two minutes or under (most average about a minute and a half) inspired by creatures from the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch; each of the thirty song titles is derived from a nickname Watt came up with for each creature, "since I don't know three-hundred-year-old Dutch". According to Watt, the album "is quite different" from his previous punk operas Contemplating the Engine Room and The Secondman's Middle Stand "in that it has no standard narrative... meaning no regular beginning-middle-end." Another inspiration woven into the album's lyrics was taken from "the idea of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz kind of tripping on what men do to 'be' men."
Musically, Watt was inspired to write short songs again after re-immersing himself in the back catalog of his first band, The Minutemen prior to and in the course of filming the documentary We Jam Econo. Watt had seen a parallel between the album's initial concept and The Minutemen in "how many little trips could roll up into one big one." Inspired by his earlier music Watt still wanted to take into account the changes in his life saying "I would write lyrics dealing with myself as a middle-aged punk rocker, which is something the Minutemen never dealt with really."
The music to all thirty songs was written by Watt on one of Watt's late friend and Minutemen bandmate D. Boon's Fender Telecasters.
I wrote the whole thing on D. Boon’s Telecaster. I’m not that much of a guitar player, but I did it on purpose so the bass would come second. I was doing all these things so it wouldn’t be too much Minutemen, because I was feeling guilty about ripping my old band off, you know?
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