Kacy Hill

Simple, Sweet, and Smiling (The Demos)

The Stars was called Indiana after the file name BJ Burton sent me, until the final hour. I was staying in my little sister’s room in Arizona and set up my studio on her bed. Once my dad went to sleep upstairs, I quietly recorded this little song. Listening back to this demo immediately takes me back to that moment in time. I didn’t write lyrics to this song until just before the final version, so the demo version here is my original scratch vocal.

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The Stars (Indiana Demo Version)

Another You barely snuck onto the album at the last moment. I thought I was done writing, but John Carroll Kirby and I continued to make ideas and this little guy emerged. The demo version is more bright and lively compared to the released version, which is difficult for me to listen to because it feels so vulnerable.

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Another You (Demo Version)

As with many others, I got a cat during the pandemic.  At one point, I had four demos that had her name in them. It doesn’t feel acceptable to have four songs called Mochi on an album, but I thought she at least deserved an Interlude. 
	This song always felt cute and sweet. There’s not too much to it but it’s a sweet song and I always knew it belonged. The demo version isn’t too different from the released version, minus some vocoder and filtered piano.

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Mochi's Interlude (Demo Version)

Caterpillars! It’s got nothing to do with caterpillars but I think I had caterpillars on the brain because there was a little caterpillar on one of my indoor plants that I had to relocate to the great outdoors. By the time I finished the song it simply could not be called anything but Caterpillars. 
	This song came out of the same batch of piano ideas from John Carroll Kirby as Walking at Midnight. Before recording this album, I would consider myself just barely functional at using Logic, but with the pandemic and my own anxiety, I was forced to become very proficient at recording myself. In the process, I accidentally found some techniques (most of which would probably not be approved by “real” “engineers”) that I would use throughout the album. A lot of these are apparent in Caterpillars, with chopped up little background vocals, and a very not professional chop midway through in the piano part. I think it gives it some charm.

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Caterpillars (Demo Version)

Easy Going is the outlier of the album because it is the only song I wrote in a studio with other humans. Ethan Gruska, Jimmy Stack, and I started this song the first time we all worked together, and went through many iterations before being finished. I put down the melody in one long vocal take (love when that happens and a whole song just falls out) and wrote the lyrics over a couple months after the session. Easy Going is my pop girl moment of the whole album.

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Easy Going (Demo Version)

So Loud went through so many versions until ending up in its final state. I love that this demo is simple and you can still hear so much of it in the final released version. Eli Teplin sent me this loop along with what would become Mochi’s Interlude and I wrote the lyrics while walking around San Francisco during Christmastime. 
	I think So Loud is my introvert anthem. While I find peace and energy in spending time alone, it also challenges me tremendously during periods of anxiety and stress. Sometimes the moments of quiet that I crave become cacophonous with my own thought cycles.

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So Loud (Demo Version)

Oooooh Walking At Midnight is a special demo. This song is very emo and fragile in its demo state. I am still endlessly honored that John Carroll Kirby allowed me to sing over his piano ideas and this one immediately spoke to me. 
	The lyrics in Walking At Midnight encompassed how I had been feeling for a long time; I was trapped in a cycle of anxious thoughts that felt endless and consuming. I remember writing in my room, perched up on a little hill in Los Feliz, listening to everyone walking up and down the street, and feeling a deep sense of aloneness. I think a lot of this album was about balancing feelings of anxiety and despair with sonic lightness.

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Walking At Midnight (Demo Version)

This song was called TenTen until the final hour because John Carroll Kirby and I started the idea on October 10th (very creative title). The lyrics of this song are some of my favorites on the album and became something of a thesis to the album as a whole. I had been trying to find lightness and simplicity in myself during a time where I felt anything but, and the idea of being “simple, sweet, and smiling” felt like something I wished I could become. I love listening to this demo version because the words still feel as relevant to me now as the day I wrote them.

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Simple, Sweet, and Smiling (TenTen Demo Version)

I think we started this song the same day as Seasons Bloom. We were deep in pandemic mode and John Carroll Kirby and I brought in Jimmy Stack to work with us after our first session. I don’t really even remember how this song began, but that might be because I drank mushroom tea during a massive migraine (it did not improve the migraine). 
	I finished melodies and structure at home and ended up with this demo. I wrote and rewrote lyrics to this song so many times before settling on the final version lyrics because the cadence of my scratch vocal always felt so nice and natural. There also might be cat meows in the vocal take… a priceless easter egg.

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The Right Time (Demo Version)

Seasons Bloom started out as a real mess of a logic session after I dissected it. I remember not being sure where to take this song after John Carroll Kirby and Jimmy Stack and I started it, but once I took out most of the music and left it bare bones I was able to find a melody in there. We did a lot of building back up to finish this song, but the melody always felt like a perfect little moving line. There’s still something exciting for me in the minimalism of the demo.

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Seasons Bloom (Demo Version)

I Couldn’t Wait was the very first song I started writing after I finished my second album. Eli Teplin sent me this piano idea that I loved, and I started the melody that exists in the song now. I let this song sit around without lyrics for a long time before committing to start a new album.

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