When the sun gets low, the musical genius of Rourke Michael rises to dawn.
Senior John Szczotka and alums Carson Waites ‘20, Jake Rummel ‘20, and Ryan Burns ‘19 wrote, recorded, and produced their album “When the Sun Gets Low” under their band name Rourke Michael. This is their second full length album, available on all streaming platforms.
“We started on ‘When the Sun Gets Low’ last summer,” Waites said. “We pretty much always have a running list of songs that are being written and recorded, and we had about sixteen songs that were originally going to be on it. But we overhauled the whole project and chose nine that fit together seamlessly to create an album that flowed.”
Within their treasure of music, they chose songs that matched their evolving “post-pop” sound, Burns said.
“We feel like we finally have a sound,” Waites said. “It took a few years to get there, but we’ve developed a fairly unique sound that incorporates a lot of diverse elements, and we feel like we’re doing something different than everyone else.”
“I think we have gone from being a pop-fusion band to something altogether different with this album,” Burns said. “We called this music ‘post-pop,’ which I think is accurate in its broadness.”
Their post-pop sound is packed with augmented vocals, atypical song forms, groovy vocal effects, different track progressions, and a “holistic” sound that fuses the variety together.
“This is the first project we’ve done where the production and composition styles of all the songs are fairly congruent, so it can basically be listened to as one big song,” Waites said.
This, Szczotka said, is one of the most outstanding features of this album. It’s a flawless unity of one cohesive narrative that travels within their sound, he added.
The album begins with “Veins II,” a sequel to the song “Veins” from their first album “Moonlighting” and a “breakthrough” in their very first project, Rummel said.
“If you listen to ‘Moonlighting,’ it was the precursor to the style of music we make now,” Waites said. “It only felt right to start our second full-length album with a tribute to that song.”
Once the group discovered the ideal sound for the album, the entire work unfolded itself as its own story.
“The album as a whole is really just a story about a person coming into themselves, reaching actualization,” Szczotka said. “In the beginning we have this person that just can’t really introspect correctly.”
The eerie introduction to the album sets the tone for the story, and the album’s narrator goes through different life challenges like alcoholism and addiction. Through these struggles, the narrator feels like they’re trying to find themselves in another person. This process feels good but not quite right, Szczotka said.
The title of the album is taken directly from the last line in the bridge of the lead single, “Wildflower.” The narrator asks, “Can you feel the earth move when the sun gets low?” According to Burns, the title is meant to “evoke the feeling of sublimity,” and acknowledge man’s lowliness in the universe.
Each member of the group brought his own artistic edge to the creative process.
“We all pulled our weight for this project,” Burns said. “I think we have played together long enough to know where we fit into the sound that we are going for, so our jobs on this album were better than they have ever been.”
Every individual talent within the group was highlighted in the album, whether that be vocals, lyrics, or production.
“The collaborative system we’ve developed is incredibly rewarding,” Rummel said. “We can hear both our collective ideas and individual production styles in each track.”
The group celebrated the release of the album two weeks ago with a listening party at their old off-campus house Boondocks.
“We set up a bunch of really good speakers, just to make sure it sounded faithful to the album,” Szczotka said.“It was just a nice way to celebrate with the people who were there.”
There are still many new projects in the making, and the group hopes to plan some studio days to come back to Boondocks just like they used to, Szczotka said.
“Without giving too much away, on the day the album came out we had our first featured artist in the studio recording a single that will probably be released before the end of the year,” Waites said. “She’s a very talented Hillsdale student, so that will be an exciting release for our Hillsdale listeners.”
The group has many songs they haven’t formed into albums yet, so they hope to keep recording and creating together even though they don’t all attend Hillsdale anymore.
“The distance between us is going to make the recording process harder, but we cannot wait to get back to work,” Burns said. “The four of us never want to lose this, and we never want to run out of musical gifts for our people.”
