“Haunted House Countryside Barreling By”


HHCBB is a song cycle for girls choir, piano, viola and violin. 

The project was a confluence of two musical ideas I was writing simultaneously: a suite for viola and piano and a "narrative album" in the style of 1950s children's story-albums. As the two developed, they began to converge into one idea: an autumnal teen drama, equal parts made-for-TV movie theatrics and Hindemith-esque 1930s neoclassicism. 

This contrast of young and old, of teenage emotions and hundred year-old harmonic language, is at the heart of the album. So much of the lyrical content concerns memory and nostalgia, and I was happy to keep ramping up this lost-in-time feeling with each decision. 

Lyrically, this contrast comes out as a meeting of cheesy ABC Afterschool Special emotions and TS Eliot-inspired flights of memory. The title, "Haunted House Countrysides Barreling By", sums up the confluence: the simple fears of youth caught in the constant motion of a mind remembering. 

More important, though, is the way that this high-mindedness creates a kind of reverential space for the minds of teenagers, and teen girls specifically -- in a society that is so quick to write off the feelings and needs of the young, I was happy to lean into the anger and lostness and feelings of injustice that are as real to the young as to anyone else. 

There is a rawness to the emotion. The song "Marielena, It's Me" concerns the death of a friend, but it isn't about grief so much as anger at those who would so quickly forget her. "Bowl of Shells", with its imagery of a child's shell collection, is less about the wistfulness of memory than its failure to re-summon what is gone. And "The Garden Calls", which takes us from a dreamed life in a European city (full of "starlit cobblestone" and metro systems "on metal halos down below") back to the small town where the cycle begins, is another meditation on the limitations of fantasy. 


Listen


[Music link]


Recording Philosophy


The goal was to recreate the intimate and unpolished sound of an early 1960s classical recording. Engineer David Jerkovich and I chose not to use digital reverb, relying instead on the old chamber reverbs at EastWest (piano and viola) and Sunset Sound (choir). At Swan Dive Studio (violin) we held down the sustain pedal on a Steinway piano and mic’d the resonating strings to create a pseudo chamber reverb. All voices and instruments were recorded with either ribbon mics or vintage tube mics. As more and more classic recording studios close in LA, it was a privilege to -----



Lyrics


1. Opening

I was out in the grass of the overflow lot
In the red brake light 
On recital night
Listening to the tires climbing up over the hill
And thunder somewhere far off

I was looking at unbounded skies above
And the doorway creaked
And the floodgates leaked
And the wetness came to my open eyes at once
And the stars made stars
In memory, in the dark 


2. Marielena, It's Me

You were my new friend and I
I was new to it all
Haunted house countrysides barreling by
Take this breath and recall 
How in the moon and the stars like a spotlight
Said I'd only to call

Marielena it's me
Toeing dust on the ground
        (I'd only to)
Marielena it's me, again
Hoping you're still around 

Wait for me by the alder tree
A promise made is a promise I keep

Here is the May and the mud
Here, the pool in the rain
The smell of the summer, the grapes in the cup
All the months in a name
All of the softly laid organdy autumn
When I'd only to call

Marielena it's me
Making shapes on the ground
        (I'd only to)
Marielena it's me, again
Hoping you're still around 

Wait for me by the alder tree
A promise made is a promise I keep
Alone at the dinner they said your name 
Their cowards, M.E., they're one and the same

Marielena it's me
        (Unhappy girl Marie)
Crawling over the ground
        (Sadly underground)
Marielena it's me, again
        (Bad influence Marie)
Hoping you're still around 
        (Had to fool around)

Hope is the reason that I was born
And hope in eternity carries me on
Your shape in the curtains, the lies they tell
I know you're with us, I hope that you're well


3. Bowl of Shells

All my memories, I’ve kept them well
Here’s my world in a bowl of shells

Shall we go, while the night is still
Shall we go, while the night is still

Feel the ocean and feel the air
Through the hallway and down the stair

Down the hall, down and down we go
Down the hall, down and down we go

Take my hand — through the gate —
Where’s the sea? — The tide is late —
See the moon — Full and bright —
Say adieu — Say goodnight —

La la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la

All my memories, I’ve kept them well
Here’s my world in a bowl of shells


4. The Garden Calls

A lonely angel in the market berry stall
With a cold tea in her hand
The lazy river of the dinner rush at dusk
In a far off land
The garden calls
The garden calls

The starlit cobblestone
        (The cobblestone)
And metro’s gentle drone
        (The gentle drone)
On metal halos down below
        (Halos down below)

And did you know there was a meadow up the road
Where the river splits in two
Awaiting no one by the water in the sun
You can find it too
The garden calls
The garden calls 



Credits


Choir: MUSYCA
Piano: Matthew Young
Violin: Gallia Kastner
Viola: Carson Rick
Written and arranged by Tyler Monsein
Engineered by David Jerkovich

Recorded at EastWest Studios, Sunset Sound, and Swan Dive Studios in Los Angeles, 2025.