Description

In 2014 former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way issued his debut solo album, Hesitant Alien, on longtime label home Warner Bros. Records. Working with producer Doug McKean and mixer Tchad Blake, Way knew immediately what he wanted Hesitant Alien to sound like.

I wanted to make the small things sound big, he says. My intention was to make 100 percent uncompromised art, using the currently least radio-friendly instrument, the guitar. I knew there would be lots of fuzz pedals. I knew I would play Fender instruments. I knew I would look at who my guitar heroes were in art school, Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein, and I drew a lot of influence from shoe-gaze and Britpop. I want the record to sonically galvanize people.

Lyrically, Way wrote about what he knew at the time, which was struggle, beginnings, finding a newness in the mundane and the abstract, he says. I looked to the Britpop poets like Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn, drawing upon every day life. I also experimented with the abstract, and looked at Frank Blacks work both with the Pixies, and as a solo artist. There was no concept and no call-to-arms.