The connection between Bill Santen and Evan Mui feels like a creative conversation that began long before the songs arrived. A Kentucky native now based in Buffalo, Santen has spent decades building a singular, low-key body of work through his indie-folk project Birddog, collaborating with bigger names like Elliott Smith, Glenn Kotche, Edith Frost and Jason Loewenstein along the way. A Los Angeles-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Mui has been affiliated with Surfer Blood, Jolie Holland and David Pajo. Under the guise of Wake Up, he’s currently working on a new LP with acclaimed producer/engineer Adam Lasus (Yo La Tengo, Lilys, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah).
Mui and Santen first connected in 2021 while assembling Subversive To Care, a compilation benefiting efforts to combat the abuse of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the pandemic. The pair quickly realized they had a lot in common.
“We came together around Elliott Smith, really,” says Santen. “I’d worked with him in the past, and Evan knew his music really well. We’re both very song- and lyric-oriented people, and we share a lot of musical influences.”
“What draws me to Bill’s songs is that he genuinely loves words and language,” says Mui. “He tells a story with his music.”
That mutual admiration and ease of collaboration became the foundation for a new split seven-inch available via Paul Is Dead. “For ‘Point John,’ I only had lyrics and a melody,” says Santen, who cites stripped-down masterpieces like Smith’s Roman Candle and Springsteen’s Nebraska as touchstones. “I was stuck, so I sang it over a click track into an old Korg digital recorder and sent it to Evan. He turned it into a song.”
Sparse yet immersive, the track’s delicate balancing act carries into Mui’s contribution, “Innocence Of Restlessness,” written during a period of post-relationship limbo. “There’s a certain naivete we have when approaching life and love and connection and aspirations,” says Mui. “Most of the time it lets you down, but I think there’s a theme for me about strength in vulnerability.”
Created with filmmaker Carl Lee, the video for “Point John” employs rewound exposures and layered imagery to conjure ghostly doubles of Santen, visually mirroring the song’s themes of conflict, fragmentation and self-confrontation.
“With the idea of inner struggle in mind, Carl would block the lens off with a matte box and shoot half, then rewind the film and shoot the other half,” says Santen. “We ended up with a lot of serendipitous arrangements coming together.”
We’re proud to premiere Birddog and Wake Up’s “Point John”/“Innocence Of Restlessness” split seven-inch.
—Hobart Rowland