Tickling Ears by The Cosmonautopolitans

Sometimes lost albums invite speculation. How might the band’s fortunes have changed if a particular release had not been held back? What direction would the band have gone if a lost song had become popular? Etc.

But I don’t think The Cosmonautopolitans ever had lofty aspirations that a lost album would have hindered. We just wanted to make music we enjoyed. If anything, we wanted to be like our heroes in bands like Joe Christmas, Flux Capacitor, Dinosaur Jr., or The Julies. Not exactly huge commercial success stories, but their music sure meant the world to us.

Tickling Ears isn’t really a lost album. We played some house shows and events around Raytown, made another album, and then moved on geographically. So, it wasn’t ever really lost; we just didn’t try to publicize it. (And had we attempted to do so, I wonder how long we would have stuck with the cumbersome band name.)

They say you can never be the same person twice. So, when I rediscovered the album in a CD spindle a few years ago, I had no desire to “fix” anything with the mix or running order. But the album was never mastered, and I felt it lacked cohesion. I reluctantly handed it over to my friend to master it, and we were quite pleased with the results.

-Jonathon

Jonathon Smith draws from a wide range of influences.

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