We’re halfway through the year. Answer honestly: Did you keep up with your New Year’s resolution? No? That’s ok—who the hell does. Actually, Chris Snyder, known now as Ace Reporter, the hell does. To say Ace Reporter had a busy 2010 is an understatement on the shoulders of his impressive if not unbelievable New Year’s resolve.
“It was December 31 of 2009. I was with a group of friends and we were locked in by a snow storm. I had my guitar with me and I wrote a song. I sent it out to some friends and said that over the next year they could expect 364 more.” What became known as the 365 Project to Chris and his friends, the newly minted Ace Reporter challenged himself to write one song every day for an entire year.
“I spent my entire adult life in my last band [The States, a Muse-style rock band]. Since 2002 it was three members writing, touring, playing together. By 2009 we just couldn’t write together anymore. We put this intense pressure on ourselves, and basically it stopped being fun. When [The States] ended, I felt lost. I thought, ‘Who am I? Am I still a musician without a band?’”
While watching a band he had poured everything into implode was a punch in the gut, the turnaround was fast, and Chris almost immediately saw the plus side to forming the project that would grow to be called Ace Reporter.
“My last band was a rock band, we never did much in the way of pushing our genre. [The 365 project] allowed me to try other genres. I experimented with electric, pop, alternative and sub-genres of rock. It was about writing good songs, whatever came to mind.”
Soon, the drive that kept The States going for 7 years would keep Chris going during the biggest musical undertaking he ever tried. He made the vow to keep focused and writing, one new song each day for one year.
While working in Times Square as a “9-5 desk monkey” and maintaining a social life, he managed to stick to his self-imposed schedule, posting a new song online daily to “keep him honest.” Some songs were a full day’s work. The shortest time spent on one was just under 30 minutes.
“I had a very small window. I had to shower and be out the door in 45 minutes, and I wouldn’t have been back until after midnight. I wrote some chords, the first lyrics that came to mind, gave it a quick mix and posted it. It actually wasn’t that bad, you know. Solidly average.”
Most are short, a few are unique covers (including Arcade Fire and a remix to a Laurie Anderson song), and “a select few were good.” Of the hit tracks he liked the most, Ace Reporter compiled collections of songs into four EPs that he made available for free download. The EPs, Lean Honey Lean, Sleepyhead, Untouched and Arrived and Arcadia in that order, truly show the musician’s growth. Each EP is start-to-finish great, with hooks and lyrics that many artists would spend days, weeks or months trying to excavate from their subconscious.
Lean Honey Lean is the first, a quiet mix of new wave pop and rock. In the second track, “PepsicoSign,” Chris sings a tune of gratitude to his modest situation. He’s spent tireless years fighting to break his music to the masses, but is still a working nine-to-five-er. Where most musicians eventually leave behind these aspirations in the face of monotony, he sings “As it is I am lucky enough/I have my friends and I have my health/I have my job and it keeps us fed/As I sing I can see you sleeping in our bed.” Chris isn’t worried about the next step anymore, different from his days fronting The States, pushing and promoting hard.
“I’m at the point now where I’m happy that anyone would dig these songs, because it was a very selfish project. I wrote for myself.”
The second EP, Sleepyhead features the staggeringly beautiful title track and “If I see you again.”
“Sleepyhead is a love song to the night. The idea came to my head first thing in the morning after a night out with my girlfriend. I quietly walked over to the next room and wrote and recorded the song on the spot, watching her sleep all along.” The second track features the quiet harmonies of violins and acoustic guitars with a gentle vibrato and simple but powerful, lyrics of longing. Sleepyhead is an appropriate title, with all of the songs serving as melodic lullabies. This EP is a step forward in songwriting from Lean Honey Lean, relying on Ace Reporter’s arrangements and strumming and less on dancey, electronic-based backgrounds.
The best of the bunch is Untouched and Arrived, a fantastic example of how this project yielded the results Ace Reporter was looking for. The third EP showcases the five strongest tracks and kicks the energy up from the first two releases. Songs “Untouched and Arrived,” “Caught in the Middle” and “The World is on Fire” are standouts, with catchy choruses sung in a Yorke-ian tenor.
Now that 2010 is long done, Ace Reporter has released every single song, available for streaming or (for the brave) download.
“100 of the songs are listenable. There are about 15-20 gems, and those are the songs you can hear on the EPs. At most, another 50 could be B-sides to those. But there are a few that if I never heard again, it would be ok.”
With 2010 and the inflicted pressure long gone now, Chris Snyder is looking forward to the future of Ace Reporter. This month, he heads into the studio to record the debut, full-length album. “I’ve played a couple of shows, recruiting friends for the live act. It’s just nice to be back on stage and see people’s reaction to the music. It reminds me that, no matter what happens, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
