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Eric breaks down some of the inspiration and meaning behind the songs on his steam gathering The Friend Is This Animal LP over at excellent site Indie Rock Reviews. These kinds of pieces can often be a bit boring and predictable (ie VH1 storytellers) but Eric manages to tie his world travels, academic and intellectual perspectives and unassuming musical and personal stories into something interesting, erudite and never trite. Of track “There’s So Much” he says “One night, I was walking home through Nezu, my neighborhood in Tokyo, and it suddenly struck me that there was some kind of odd, almost rhythmic logic to the world, and that it could be seen in the layout of the streets of that grand city, Tokyo. Not just the street grid, but the geometry of the streets, little square houses and tiny, plant-lined walkways of Nezu, as well as the topology between specific points that I knew and loved in the city: the public bathhouse, the big stone staircase in Ueno Koen, a gyoza shop in Ueno Station, the pond in Yoyogi Koen, the little French bistro down the street from Grapefruit Moon, the hilly street in Kamakura where Jack and Chie live, a karaoke booth near Omote Sando where Kenzo and I sang Beatles songs, the laundry mat, the zoo, and the smell of tatami mats in the bedroom. All of this served as the germ of a song, and eventually connected with the snowy streets of Highland Park, New Jersey…”. Read the rest here.