While the moniker Internet Dating may evoke music that’s a bit more freewheeling than what Minneapolis-based songwriter Deano Erickson typically writes, his latest project may be the least reverent to the title. Incomplete Control is a soft-rock exploration of the limits of control—to keep up the metaphor, it sounds like a sobering define-the-relationship talk on the first date. While it makes sense that these songs are seeing the light of day just beyond the one-year anniversary of most of us losing control in plenty of different aspects of our personal and professional lives in the wake of the pandemic, the record’s actually been in the works for quite some time.
“I took my time writing Incomplete Control, some of the songs took years to finish,” Erickson notes. “I noticed that I often rush myself to record and release songs as soon as I possibly can, but with this record I wanted to take my time, and take it slow. The song ‘Meddle in the Middle’ is one of my favorites for this reason. I wrote and rewrote the chorus over and over again until one day I was reading a poem I had written almost six years prior, and the line ‘If all the words I could ever need were mine, I’d leave my thoughts somewhere easy to find’ stuck out to me. I write songs to help myself process thoughts, emotions, and feelings that are often hard to convey through words. Sometimes it can take years to find the right words to describe how you feel. This record feels whole to me in this way; I gave the songs time to find me.
“Once the album was written, I drove out to St. Louis to record with my good friend Ryan Wasoba at Bird Cloud Studios,” he continus. “Trevor Aarsvold and I spent the following few months adding double bass, electric guitar, and other layers to all the songs and sent it back to Ryan to mix. I really loved working with Ryan on this record, he brought a lot of really good ideas to the table, and I don’t think this record would have turned out the way it did if he hadn’t been so involved.”
You can hear the record in full below—it’s officially out today via Brace Cover Records, and can be purchased here.
