Why Bother?

UNEASY LISTENING MUSIC: An Important Message from ADULT.

Mindless packs, erroneous folklore, misguided shepherds, aggressive incompetence, and real life horrors blend together into this, our fourth album. Why Bother? Some will read this title, sigh and agree, while others will read the title and react with reactionary resentment and countless reasons why one should bother. A test? Why Bother? Well, if you've got a minute to spare, we'll tell you exactly why you should care. Uneasy listening music for uneasy times. A time to contextualize "folk" for our intent and advocate the importance of being folk. Folklore defines a distinctive culture, the common people, real people. Folk suggests a culture content to operate "outside"; the place where we are most at ease. With that explanation, this must be a folk record, but realistically it would probably be that kind of "folk" that conjures up images of "Deliverance", "Motel Hell's" Farmer Vincent or Leatherface's family life.

Uncomfortable, restless, disturbed, perturbed, awkward and anxious. Why Bother? hopes to spread the word of weird... Abnormal motivations, ready and willing. Trying to tilt the balance of over-stimulation. What is the next step if VIDEODROME is not the endgame itself? Cataloging, categorizing, sterilizing, co-opting and over-hype marketing have created a social smothering and mass indolence. If you aren't inclined to vomit, than you will probably feel worse when exposed to our brand of folk.

We lack a casualness. We feel the pack is always coming, coming to misdeed, and this leads to our continual unease. Complacency can win because it allows an option -a way out. As the song "Good Deeds" reads, "Lock all the doors and all the windows / The pack is a comin’, the pack is coming / Bringing some smiles and some very good deeds / It's a smotherin’, smotherin’ me".

There is a joke in visual artwork that when someone asks you how long it took to make a piece, you always answer with "My whole life." While half a joke, it is also very true. Whether it is a single drip on a canvas or a labored full size bronze figure, the idea is that it did take the artist their entire life to come up with that solution at that particular time. Why Bother? is definitely our "entire life" piece. While written in 4 months in Detroit in our own Woodhouse Studios and then recorded in late October 2006 at The Key Club Recording Co. in Benton Harbor by Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins (our first album recorded outside of our own Woodhouse Studios), this album, of all our albums, we feel is the most accurate culmination of our disordered hysteria.

The photography for the album is by Nicola Kuperus (of ADULT.) and the visual concept and design was created by both members of ADULT. (Adam Lee Miller and Nicola). And yes, we're married. With the departure of Samuel Consiglio in January 2006, a lot of things became lucid. The return to the duo (a duo for 7 years, a trio for 1, and back) allowed us an invaluable incite into our own psychosis, as well as the experiences gained from the 65 performances for the previous album "Gimmie Trouble". All of these things, plus our "entire lives", created the cultivation needed to harvest Why Bother? Will you? Will you... bother?