"I’ve kept all my fortune cookie fortunes. So I have hundreds of fortunes. I’ve always wondered why I keep these fortunes, and when we started to get together for this I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be a good thing. Arranging the fortunes, Oldham used them like a “sample kit,” a “palette for words” that allowed him to free associate and melodically improvise, with gentle platitudes at the ready to draw from. The lyrics drift in and out, positive and soothing, but quizzical and curious, too. “May life throw you a pleasant curve,” Oldham sings. “Show your love and your love will be returned,” he whimsically advises. Coupled with the Bajas’ mystic tones, the platitudes take on a warm resonance beyond their humble origins, like the cat from one of those “hang in there” motivational posters climbing out of its tree to purr in your lap.
“Music is, I think, meant to placate, complete, disrupt,” Oldham says. “It’s meant to be a part of psyches that are already pretty much formed but will be incessantly incomplete until death. I like that idea that the thing that I need most is some sort of accepting, comfort, and acknowledgment that things are unclear, but that one is not alone in experiencing this lack of clarity.”" - Aquarium Drunkard