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After the tour, he sucked up his fear and send Lax the six songs which would become the 2007 LP Cleaning the Mirror. DeBroux constructed the songs on record during a “tough period” in his life; one that saw him living out of cars, on floors and in friend’s closets. He attributes the length of the tunes from these sessions to his speed habit. When he could access recording equipment, DeBroux often stayed up for days at a time, perfecting each song’s sound by recording and rerecording guitar solos and bridges while jacked on crystal meth. Seven-minute recordings felt like pop songs to the geeked DeBroux.
“[Cleaning the Mirror] represents a pretty rough time in my life,” said De Broux. “It’s kind of weird that sometimes, when I think about what I want to do next and shit like that, I’m just in a completely different place than I was in when I was recording that stuff, you know.”
Darkness infests the album and DeBroux lowers his easy-going Midwest vocal tone when relating tales from the period. One of his many stories involves grabbing a few friends and some possessions and heading to New Orleans in an attempt to forge a career for his hardcore band. On the way, the only people with money spent it on truck stop beef jerky and other “nonsense,” so the crew sold most of their belongings to survive in the Big Easy. DeBroux worked temp jobs in the day and eventually saved enough money to travel back north. The band broke up soon after.
Another finds him spending six months living with and apprenticing under a meth cook and practicing guitar in his vast amount of free time. While moving the meth cook’s heroin-addled girlfriend into a new apartment, DeBroux stumbled upon her diary. Unable to restrain himself, he flipped through the pages. Some of the words stuck with him and reworked versions of the diary passages slipped into a few lines on “Up the Sleeve.” The gothic-folk feel of the song reflects the bleakness of the lyrics, its tar-pace steadily creeping along until it reaches a lackadaisical boiling point.
“It doesn’t make me feel bad, listening to it,” he said. “I don’t regret my experiences or anything but, when I hear that, it takes me back to times I don’t necessarily want to relive at this point in my life.”
“Up the Sleeve” also demonstrates his instrumental approach, as it was orchestrated on the spot using whatever instruments were available at the time. He varies his attack on the song, thrashing about on banjo, saxophone and organ as opposed to the usual cheap Casio and guitar attack. After recording the song, he quickly forgot its chords. DeBroux, who taught himself to play guitar by playing along to Russian punk songs, wings it with many other instruments on his recordings. On “New Violence,” he bounced a big exercise ball for percussion. DeBroux constructed the rhythm guitar line on “Sleight Train” by strumming on a broken toy guitar he found while dumpster diving.
“A lot of the instruments I use on the recordings I don’t even technically know how to play,” he said. “Once you’ve been fucking around with shit as long as I have, even if you’re not playing it right, you’re still getting what you want out of it.”
Though recordings mainly feature DeBroux, Pink Reason concerts feature an ever-rotating cast of musicians. As of May 2007, he claims six members left the band, including Shaun Handlen, an original Pink Reason member who moved to China. He seems to snag whoever is around for each tour. Before the spring tour with Psychedelic Horseshit, DeBroux assembled a band from friends who had moved back in with their parents or were living in cars. At a Cleveland show in March, DeBroux drafted Alex Teder to fill in on drums after his drummer abruptly quit a few dates into the tour.
“A lot of people, I don’t think quit. I just think they play with him for a couple of weeks and then go back to their day jobs,” said Teder. “It’s not like a conflict of interest with anyone not getting along with anyone else.”
DeBroux recently shipped off to search of a backing band in Columbus, where record stores already stock Pink Reason records in the “local” section. His success with the LP generated a need for a permanent band. To support his self-professed “transient nature,” Kevin embarks on a national tour this summer with a full backing band in support of Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones. He will have a rotating cast of characters in tow for the trek. DeBroux could not tell whether his new supporting band will rock with the loose garage feel or his recordings’ structured basement groove.
“I never consciously set out to do anything specific,” he said. “It kind of just happens.”