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Human Potential

I Write Wedding Songs
“I Write Wedding Songs” is the sixth release by Human Potential - the solo project of Andrew Becker; an award-winning filmmaker and former drummer for both Dischord Records’ band, Medications, and Brooklyn provocateurs, Screens.

In 2023, following the release of his fifth record, “Hoosi, No!”, Becker resolved to create a follow up album that would aesthetically upend and melodically transgress his most recent batch of cosmic slop. But, after years of working in relative isolation, he decided to make a definitive procedural modification…to reach out beyond his secluded silo and seek out a delicate production hand that could help grease the erstwhile musical machine.

That spring, after many dead-end investigations, AB managed to track down old friend and peripatetic troubadour, L. Skell (creator of entombed classic, Eldridge Skell’s The Rude Staircase’s “Sookie Jump”), who had spent the weirder part of a decade skiff hopping throughout Central America, convincing him to abscond north of the border to embark on a hellishly phantasmagoric musical journey.

For months, the two holed up in Becker’s fetid Los Angeles biodome, reinvigorating old oddities, while ushering in entirely new paradigms of creation. In order to demystify a sketch Becker had been working on, the pair employed rigid parameters, limiting themselves to one hour of clandestine solo work on the song, before turning it back to the other to do the same, every hour, over the course of an entire day. The result was “Clear Notes for a New National Anthem”, a jiggy ditty that flops and seizes before nose diving into the bawdy bowels of a Wichita disco. “Cut Worm Forgets the Plow” swaths a synth-pop anthem in a sampledelic glaze, while “A Witch for Charlemagne” oozes no wave leakage over mellifluous peacocking. The poptones of “You Only Love What You Can Lose” is preordained to breach the steadfast emotional dams of the black-hearted, while title track, “I Write Weddings Songs” leads the listener on an illusory montage of lost loves and derelict dreams before climbing safely into the saddle of its idyllic climax. Before it was all said and done, Becker had brought other contributors into the fold, including former Screens bandmate (and Apes singer) Breck Brunson, as well as vocalist Amira Nader, who imprinted the proceedings with their inimitable melodic stylings.

Like all previous Human Potential album art, Becker dove into his personal archives for inspiration, this time pulling an image captured at his parents’ wedding reception many decades ago. The juxtaposition of the celebratory union with the divorce that would upend the marriage some years later, embodies the idea that memories, moments and life-defining songs shift tonally with the ebbs and flows that chart our existence. So it goes.

Alas, “I Write Wedding Songs” is perhaps the most sonically sensuous and bafflingly palatable Human Potential album to date - a chimerical flavor rainbow of glistening, grimy, grandiose pop that inhales darkly and seethes brightly, welcoming all listeners to a shady place where joy and heartbreak dance together in a moonlit tidepool of teetering radiance.

“I Write Wedding Songs” will be released on Becker’s own, What Delicate Recordings on November 15th, 2024.
Records
I Write Wedding Songs
September 15, 2024
I Write Wedding Songs
Hoosi, No!
February 24, 2023
Hoosi, No!
Book Of Jaws
I Have To Leave Because There Are No Rivers Here
Zwunck
Some Small Anti-Christ At The Art Show
80 All Over
Love Song For H.R. To Sing
Dye-Night Escapes
Queasy Bricks And Starving Cars: The Spectacular Collapse Of The Wing Street Bridge
Hoosi, No!
I’m Glad You’re Alive
February 7, 2020
Marginalia III / Bird Saw
Nausea VII
Beat The Heat
Shifting Sands, Sliding Scales
Theme From The Center Of A Room
Five Reasonable Goals
California Drain
Fast Trash
I’m Glad You’re Alive
I’m Glad You’re Alive
Hot Gun Western City
July 22, 2017
Apparitioning
Nearly Nines
Wayfare Radio
Majestic Park Training
Notes from the Moon Factory Parking Lot
Hot Gun Western City
Moses on the Sentry Box
Too Early for Tomorrow
Guilder
Hot Gun Western City
How To Get Where You Want To Go
October 3, 2015
Manasquan 12/19/97
Marathon 12/19/67
Reprisal
Shivering Through
This History in Pictures
The End of Heaven
105 Pounds of Disintegration
Jungle Speed in French
You Are Not All Alone
Frederick's Son
How To Get Where You Want To Go
Heartbreak Record
June 3, 2014
Heartbreak Song
Rounded Hours
If Ever...And Any
Bridges, Platforms and Copper Spires
Silverless
To Effectively Mirror Saturn
The Weight of Weathering
Plastic Flowers
More Like Flying
January's Camera
Heartbreak Record