Between 2018 and 2022 Jaded Azurites made five EPs, and each came into the world in an easy, almost charmed way. I don’t mean we didn’t work hard—Mike Watt is probably the most disciplined person I will ever know, and as a writer I hold myself to whatever high standard I can reach. But EPs one through five slid out without stress. No C sections, no risky labor. Looking back, I see them this way because Number Six was different.

In the fall of 2022, I gave Mike three single-stanza poems I’d written using techniques developed through workshops with a New York poet named Shira Dentz, who teaches hybrid work as a way to release trauma. I wanted images from early in these poems to resonate throughout later lines—almost like transparencies subsequent images float through. Mike composed bass to these three poems—“Sure,” “An Uncomfortable Pillow,” “Songed”—then composed two more tunes that faded in and out, for me to write into. It was important to Mike that we, as Jaded Azurites, evolve and push ourselves, not just keep collaborating the same way EP after EP.

I was inspired by the two new tunes, which had relatively elaborate structures and chord changes, and tried to mirror their motifs with similar shifts and repetitions in the writing. In “Op Cit” (“in the work already cited”), words and phrases circle and overlap, creating a ripple effect. In “Adjacency,” I matched grammatical structures to certain melodic riffs. It was the spring of 2023 before these poems were done, then came the task of recording vocals. I tried various set-ups in my house and Mike encouraged me to keep trying. Finally I dragged a litter box out of a dead-end hallway, lined three walls with foam baffles and draped a blanket over a high-backed chair to mimic a fourth. By then summer was at its peak—a memorably brutal climate change summer of wildfires, smoky skies, boiling oceans and weeks-on-end record-breaking heat.

There were times—several—many—when I wondered what all the effort was for. I wondered who would know or care that Mike and I labored, and figured our labors would sink immediately under the surface of a sickening world. The word that comes to mind is crucible: on Number Six (named, by the way, after the main character in the ‘60s TV show The Prisoner, which was Mike’s favorite when he was a boy), Jaded Azurites went from being something maybe a bit carefree to being real. It’s not casual anymore. I don’t know if anyone else will hear a difference, but I think we tore a little hole in the horror and bullshit, and I feel good about that. And now that’s the new standard going forward, which we’re both excited to do.