Today marks the release of Every Day I Tell Myself I’m Going To Be A Better Person, the debut full-length from Misser, a side-project from Tim Landers of Transit and This Time Next Year’s Brad Wiseman. Landers [right] sat down to explain at length the songs that make up the album, available with a stream below.

“Permanently”

I remember walking around the studio with an acoustic guitar one morning, feeling exceptionally terrible from the previous late night. I was being weird and singing random lyrics while doing this. These lyrics and melody just kind of came out. Brad laughed; this became the intro to the record.

“Time Capsule”

This is one of my favorites. You know when you’re in middle school and your artsy, hip teacher encourages you to bury a few items in a box for you to dig up as an adult, only to be overwhelmed with an epiphany of comforting nostalgia? Well, that never happened to me, but a few of my friends did it. That’s what this song is about, in a way. I wanted to be in that box, someone’s time capsule. It’s about not being able to completely let go of something (or someone) because you don’t have the guts to, with my weird gruesome twist on it. Gary (Cioffi, producer) and I had a lot of fun tracking this one. We made a bunch of noise at the beginning of the track by scraping a beer bottle up and down the guitar strings.

“Bridges”

This song is fucking old as hell; I wrote it when I was 17. I hated high school, I hated my town and I was just like every other kid and venting about it. I couldn’t wait to move away from everything. I love it, though; it still makes me smile when I hear it. This was the first song I ever wrote for me to sing, and the first time I stepped out of the Transit box since starting Transit.

“Weightless”

The original version of this song was very slow and strange. There was a few weeks of my life a year or so ago where I wouldn’t let myself go to sleep before I finished writing a song; I remember being half-drunk and scribbling these lyrics on a sheet next to my bed. At times, I’m very reluctant to say or do things that I feel. That’s what “Weightless” is about. This one sat on the backburner for a while. A couple of weeks before we started recording, I changed the riff and sped the whole thing up.

“Just Say It”

When the idea of Misser began in my mind, this was the first song I wrote. I had a few songs, and I wanted to record them myself and make a project of it. I decided I’d do it, and I was infatuated with the thought. “Just Say It” and “She Didn’t Turn Out To Be That Cool” were the first couple of songs that were products of that excitement. I was listening to a lot of Superchunk and Dinosaur Jr. and I just wanted to write rock songs.

“I’m Really Starting To Hope The World Ends In 2012”

I really am. I couldn’t tell how I felt about this song for a while, but Brad was really into it so that ignited some confidence in it for me. I’m not really a fan of pop culture. I rarely turn on my television, and I feel like the Boston radio stations have been circulating the same 15 or so songs for the past 10 years. I just don’t see how people can be so blind to the insincerity in some things. I also don’t understand how such a widespread community of people subject themselves to shit entertainment. But hey, that’s just me. I’ll stop there.

“Reconnect This”

This and “Sanity” are the two songs in which Brad had a big part in the writing process. These are Brad’s lyrics. He let me tamper with the riffs and parts. This turned out to be one of my favorites—have I said that too many times yet? My friend John Delloiacono, who was the engineer for the record, and I spent a lot of time messing with the leads in this song and just trying to make it sound strange, but beautiful.

“Stay Asleep”

I miss her, dude.

“Bad News”

I hate the Mass Pike. I’m ecstatic that I finally got to talk shit on it in a song. This is a song that I found a random demo of in my GarageBand files one day. I don’t even remember writing it. I hope Modest Mouse doesn’t sue me for referencing that title. I also got to track some guitars on this record with the heaviest tones I’ve ever played with. I loved it.

“She Didn’t Turn Out To Be That Cool”

This was the song I had the most trouble tracking. We re-recorded the guitars and bass multiple times. It was originally on our EP Problems. Problems. Problems. Whenever you re-record a song, you really need to bring a new life to it. We were super-cautious about that. The end of this song came out so cool, I think. I was playing the parts, and Gary was just pulling the cable in and out of the input on the guitar—that’s the crazy-sounding lead and other hectic stuff going on. It’s all natural.

“I’m Sick”

An acoustic version of this song almost found its way onto our EP. It’s a pretty old one. I don’t really know what to say about it. I was pretty mad.

“Sanity”

Brad had this melody and lyrics for a while, and we kept tossing it around. I wrote this riff in the studio one day and it just fit so perfectly. When tracking the percussion parts in it, we were going through the studio’s box of various shakers and tambourines and trying to find what sounded right. We ended up putting that entire box on the ground and recording ourselves kicking it—that’s the percussion in the song. There’s also a beautiful kick-drum part played by Mr. Wiseman.

“The Waits”

It’s hard to maintain stable relationships while touring for nine or 10 months out of the year. There are tough times, but it just makes it worth it in the end. I acoustically demoed 15-20 songs for this record over the course of the past year. This was the song that everyone involved with the project told me they loved right away. I think this one really came to life in the studio. alt