Listen: Pussy Wizard – “Brave Horatius (2001​-​2011)”

“I started playing music under the moniker Brave Horatius in 2001 when my parents got me a digital 8-track recorder. My mom had given me a book called Opal. It was the diary of a 6 year old orphaned girl. Brave Horatius was her dog and constant companion. I made a couple of really embarrassing tapes and gave them to a few friends. My punk band had broken up and I was sad because I got dumped for the first time. Typical early 2000’s late-teenage post fuck the system angst all encompassed by the depression of beginning to enter adulthood to a soundtrack of Fevers and Mirrors on repeat. College came with confusion and drinking and smoking and other not-so-hard drugs and more heartbreak and reading Bukowski and thinking “oh I get it now.” Whatever. I made a little zine/CDR EP thing, had a song on a compilation, put out a split, and did a few tours. Moved to San Francisco in 2008. Recorded songs with a 4-track in a vacant apartment above mine. Moved back to South Carolina in 2011 and decided the moniker was exhausted and boring. I worked a decade on trying to capture songs how they were imagined and never got it the way I wanted and I wanted to move on. So I made Pussy Wizard to avoid the seriousness that often leads to huge expectations that often lead to huge disappointments. But here is a time capsule of attempts at making a record I unrealistically imagined for far too long.”