Since the release of both"Unquiet" and"Concerto for Second Fiddle" in 2008, Doug McKean has gotten married, toured extensively with the Magpies, finished a degree in Mathematics and continued to study actuarial science, and lived briefly in Texas, playing with Owen Temple and Colin Gilmore. Surprisingly, the record that came out of these experiences,"Esperanto Sessions", which is set for an early 2012 release, is his most focused effort yet. There is plenty of variety - the Pogues-esque 'By the Time I Get to Chong Nonsi' gets things off to a rollicking start before giving way to the anthemic 'There's a Party in the USA' and the eerie country blues of 'Silk Scarecrow', and the next 9 songs flirt, sometimes reverently, sometimes playfully, with a number of styles - but McKean's and Ryan Foltz's (Rancid, Magpies, Elephant Bones) production gives the proceedings a unified feel that mirrors the way the lyrics tackle and make a perverse sort of sense of such a broad swath of experiences."Originally, I thought I was making an acoustic folk-pop record" says McKean."I took the songs over to Bill Fox and we recorded them on his four track. The process of laying down tracks by yourself with Bill Fox manning the tape deck 3 feet away tends to focus your mind on whether or not everything about the song is working. Strangely enough, the better it sounded, the more clearly I heard extra parts. In my imagination, the record got a lot bigger from the process of focusing on the basics of it." The next step was to head to Cleveland Audio and team with Ryan Foltz to recut and in many cases, rearrange the songs."I wasn't going to do any of the songs with drums originally. Bill had me play some percussive stuff on whatever was around, but I was consciously steering clear of drums. Some tunes stayed that way, but a lot of them were calling for more. 'Almost Everywhere' had to be grandiose. I wanted 'Winston Salem' to sound like Mississippi John Hurt playing the Sanford and Son Theme." In short, this is not exactly a folk-pop record. Another noticeable difference on"Esperanto Sessions" is the dearth of outside players."This record is really about making sense of things without too much distraction. We had a few friends in, but they were there for the purpose of playing something better than Ryan or I could. The last few records were about bringing people in to see what they'd bring to a song. It wasn't about that this time." The title of the record reflects this approach."I think the idea of needing to communicate in order to bring peace, be it internal or external, but having to invent a language in order to do it, is analogous to the process of making art."