In 2013, featuring the welcome addition of new drummer John Gessert, Prairie Psycho released their sixth album. Someday, it will be economically feasible to release the entire album with the eight electrifying covers, but for now, the official Bandcamp release of Leon, Backwards features only the original compositions.

For posterity's sake, here is the original tracklisting:

01 (Going to the) Seaworthy Sea (Stanfield)

02 Vulgar Message (Stanfield)

03 Lee Remick (McLennan-Forster)

04 Consider the Lobster (Stanfield)

05 Goodnight, Meredith (Stanfield)

06 That's Entertainment! (Weller)

07 Unkindest Cut (Stanfield)

08 September Gurls (Chilton)

09 Doo Lang (Stanfield)

10 You're Gonna Miss Me (Erickson)

11 Jane Eyre (Stanfield)

12 Kind Operation (Stanfield)

13 Girl of My Dreams (Thomas)

14 Moral Hazard (Stanfield)

15 Stained (Stanfield)

16 Summer Babe (Malkmus)

17 Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)/Dear Prudence (Lennon-McCartney)

18 TV Eye (Pop-R. Asheton-S. Asheton-Alexander)

LEON, BACKWARDS (2013)
Liner notes by Scott Stanfield

In the summer of 2008, Prairie Psycho was rescued from its drummer-less limbo through the unlikely agency of Leadership Lincoln, a municipal program designed to help up-and-coming Lincoln professionals connect with each other.

Noel’s wife, Ladette, had just become the managing editor of the Prairie Schooner, a locally-based literary journal, so she was invited to participate. At one of the events she met John Gessert, Omaha native, who had just moved to Lincoln from Denver with his family to take a position at the First National Bank. In the course of a conversation, Ladette mentioned that her husband, in addition to his paying job, was in a rock band, but the band was currently lacking a drummer. John, it turned out, was a drummer. We auditioned each other in Noel’s basement, everyone passed, John joined Prairie Psycho, and Ladette’s streak of finding our next drummer continued.

This album is testament to how quickly and how seamlessly John made himself integral to the ensemble. (John is still our drummer, I’m happy to say, as of 2020.)

Late in 2009, Ladette took an even better job at an even more famous literary journal, this one (unluckily for us) located in Boston. Noel had some business to finish, and so did not follow her out to New England until fall of 2010—which gave us time to record this before he left. Its title—“Leon” backwards is, of course, “Noel”—is a tribute to our departing founding member after his fourteen years in the group.
This was the first of our recordings to be supervised by future member Sam Segrist, recorded in his basement studio over the summer of 2010. Sam is the reason we re-did “Vulgar Message,” a track on Prairie Psycho Companion; it was a favorite of his, so we recorded it at his request.

The eighteen tracks on Leon, Backwards include eight covers, which give you a good idea of some of our influences—the Go-Betweens, the Jam, Big Star, the 13th Floor Elevators, Bram Tchaikovsky, Pavement, Joy Division, the Stooges—but are not available on this site for the usual intellectual property sorts of reasons. I wrote the other ten, which I will introduce to you below.

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“(Going to the) Seaworthy Sea” kicks things off and started many a live set at that time and later. What is it about? I wrote it, and I’m not at all sure. The second verse is based on Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, the “Japanese husband who lives in a well” of the chorus is from Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and “sufferin’ succotash!” is one of the exclamations of Warner Brothers cartoon cat Sylvester. The song may be about frustrated characters who have realized they need to get out of the situation they are in, but are unsure how to do so. But your guess is as good as mine.

“Vulgar Message,” as mentioned in Prairie Psycho Companion notes, is partly inspired by the French Revolution and Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World. We really knew the song well by this time, though, so I would say this version is a bit more ferocious than out first pass, thanks to Larry’s wrath-of-God solo and John’s sharp-as-a-tack snare.

“Consider the Lobster” reveals its inspiration in its title—David Foster Wallace’s unforgettable essay about a visit to a lobster festival. Larry had few opportunities in Prairie Psycho to show off his finger-picking skills, but they shine here, as does Noel’s orchestral guitar part.

The title of “Goodnight, Meredith” is inspired by one of the poems in Mathias Svalina’s Destruction Myths, and the song is partly a middle-aged person’s attempt to imagine the adolescent condition as it might have felt in the first decade of the 21st century. “Leave Britney [Spears, that is] alone!” was the heartfelt cry of a YouTube phenomenon of the moment.

“Unkindest Cut” was born with when I stumbled across the guitar riff that runs throughout. I decided the song ought to be partly a tribute to our home, Lincoln, Nebraska, several of whose landmarks—the Sunken Gardens, Wyuka cemetery, Memorial Stadium, Centennial Mall—get mentioned. “Bless the Beasts and the Children” was a film of the 1970s, with a theme song by the Carpenters, and I have no idea why I thought of it in this context.

“Doo Lang.” “Doo Lang” is something background singers sing in a variety of songs—“He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons is the best-known. It tends to re-surface in one song or another from era to era, which prompted this song about a guy whose lifetime is punctuated by songs in which the nonsensical syllables appear. This song was our attempt at the Spector Wall of Sound, from its “Be My Baby” drum intro to the closing “whoa-ho-ho.” And let’s not forget the wobbling-on-the-highwire drama of Larry’s solo.

“Jane Eyre”—again, the title tells you all you need to know: obviously, inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel. Another live staple. I believe the rhythmic trick of the eight-note pause at the start of the linking section was Larry’s idea. This cut is also a good example of Noel’s knack for holding back during the verse and then turning the chorus into a monster.

“Kind Operation.” I had a heart catheterization in 2004. It did not happen exactly like this, but somehow that inspired the song.

“Moral Hazard” was inspired by the financial crisis of 2008. John, a banker, found it a little annoying, so it never became a regular in the live set, but its instrumental sections are remarkable for being a very rare example of Prairie Psycho tilting towards math rock.

“Stained.” Somewhat loosely inspired by Kurt Cobain, or Lord Byron, or anyone who does not expect to be popular, in fact disdains popularity a little, then wakes up one day to find he is all the rage (not based on personal experience, obviously). Trivia note: all the verses use the same rhymes (-tion, -oo, -oh, -on). I think this was supposed to convey the idea of being on a treadmill or hamster wheel. Some classic Noel string-damping here, under some classic Larry lyricism.