Make no mistake, the holidays are stressful. With all the traffic, lines at the mall and family drama at home, it’s a wonder we even bother saying “happy holidays” at all. Of course, we have little choice in participating, so all we can do is prepare ourselves for the oncoming storm.

During these trying times, it behooves us to get as comfortable as possible whenever we get the chance. If you don’t, you risk your head exploding, which would definitely ruin Christmas for everyone. You don’t need that shit on your plate, brothers and sisters. No one wants to be responsible for ruining Christmas, unless they are a member of ISIS. Well, are you?

Now that we’ve cleared that up, we can get back to getting comfortable. Around my house, we get comfortable by putting on pajamas—also known as comfies, jamma-jammy-jams, or jammies for short. These are not the sexy clothes you put on to entice your significant other or random strangers at the strip club. Jammies are what you wear when you are home sick or not expecting anyone to come over.

Jammies do not have to be jammies in the traditional sense. For example, I wear T-shirts and basketball shorts in the summer, and switch it up to sweats or pajama bottoms in the winter. In the winter months, one of my favorite shirts is a long sleeve shirt that I’ve had forever. It’s a red ENYCE shirt with a weird blueprint thing on the back. It’s a pretty lame shirt, design-wise, but the long sleeves really sold me on it back then, and have kept me coming back time and time again.

It would be an understatement to say that this shirt has seen better days. After more than 20 years, it’s full of holes and both of the sleeves and collar are frayed at the edges. Hundreds of washes have left the graphics cracked and faded. An accidental bleach stain and the subsequent hole it left behind mark the back of the shirt and led to its original demotion from outside-wear to jammies status so many years ago. Despite all these defects, or perhaps because of them, the shirt remains one of the most comfortable I own.

I think of it as well broken-in. The holes near the cuffs of the sleeves allow me to pop my thumbs through and get a fingerless glove kind of thing going on when my hands are cold. Other holes provide for easy access scratching for nearly any itch on my upper body. The shirt has a few stains on it as well, but that just means I don’t have to worry about spilling as much. The shirt is basically perfect, and when it goes on, it doesn’t take long before I am completely and totally relaxed.

I’m lucky my red shirt still fits after all these years. I got it in high school when I was chubby and wearing baggy clothes was cool, so it still fits as good as it ever did. And that’s a good thing, because this shirt has been with me through everything, and I might not have made it through it all without its soft, warm cotton to help along the way.

I had this shirt when I graduated high school and went off to college. I wore it while studying for all sorts of midterms, finals and eventually even the bar exam. I took it with me to nine countries and at least as many states. I never know when I am going to need it and the things that it can do.

The shirt is far too wrecked to be worn in public, but that is not really what it’s for. I wear it when the house is cold after a long day of work. I wear it when I’m sick. I wear it when I feel stressed out or depressed. I wear it when I am away and miss home. When I need to be comforted or comfortable, when I am feeling vulnerable and want to be put at ease, this is the shirt I go for. It always makes me feel better.

This situation is not unique to me. Most of us have an article of clothing like my red shirt. Yours may be blue or green, older or newer, or it may not be a shirt at all. Whatever it may be, the feeling you get when you put it on is all the same. To you, it’s more than just a piece of clothing; it’s a part of who you are and where you’ve been. That’s why it’s stuck around in your closet long past its due date. I’ll probably keep mine until it’s reduced to shreds, but I don’t want to think about that now. The hell of the holidays are upon us and I am going to need my red shirt to get me through the end of the year.

Sacramento music wunderkind Michael Franzino talks A Lot Like Birds
Words by Julie De La Torre
Photo by Daniel Dare

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A Lot Like Birds isn’t, well, a lot like anything else you’ve heard before. Starting out as a two-man project led by frontman Michael Franzino, the experimental group soon picked up five additional members and hasn’t looked back. Since winning the Jammies with former band She’s a Dead Man in 2007, the precocious 20-year-old has not only grown up mentally, but musically, as well.

Submerge had the chance to chat with Franzino about everything from his main sources of inspiration to what it was like recording an insanely sophisticated debut release in the confines of a suburban living room. With their ball-busting stage presence and new full-length album, Plan B, A Lot Like Birds is proving to be one of the most promising up-and-comers of 2010.

So, first off, what are you trying to accomplish with A Lot Like Birds that’s different from your other musical projects?
In my previous and first band, our appeal lied solely in our live shows, due to youthful inexperience and naiveté in musicianship and our wildly eccentric and strong stage presence. People came to our shows to dance or laugh at how silly we could be. A lot has changed in my life in the two years since the demise of She’s a Dead Man, and a hell of a lot has changed since the beginning of it four years ago, when the majority of that music was written. It’s kind of like being a senior laughing at your goofy freshman self in retrospect. I’d like to think (or hope, really) that A Lot Like Birds gives people something stimulating or moving to listen to, while we lose our fucking minds on stage night after night.

What were your biggest challenges while recording Plan B?
That would most definitely be the drum programming process, which took five of the nine total months in the studio with the great Jack O’Donnell’s Shattered Records. I basically had a big MIDI spreadsheet before me with every possible beat and every possible drum and cymbal where I had to dictate, as a guitarist, every single drum note and how hard it was to be hit. That, and we had all kinds of nail-biting computer troubles; Jack never expected to record songs with over 100 tracks.

What have you taken from this entire experience? What have you learned since your days of winning the Jammies in high school?
What I learned most from this experience was the recording process really, and how to utilize it as another dynamic in my music. There are all kinds of tricks [and] ways to change moods or make parts sound bigger or spacey or creepy. Utilizing effects and compression appropriately can really make a song or part something different. There’s so much more to making a record than people think; it gives me such a new love for the albums I revere.

It seems like the album has a lot of Mars Volta/At the Drive In inspiration behind it. If so, how does that come into play? What/who are your main influences? 
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is certainly a hero of mine. If I take anything from the man, it’s a driving insistence upon challenging myself and an audience. Using chaos and discord to contrast gentle and beautiful or making tension and anxiety in a big build are some of my favorite dynamics, and Omar is a master of them among many other things. If the music I write is influenced by anything I can articulate, it’s moods or phases in my life. The past few years in which Plan B formed in my head were some of the darkest times I’ve seen. I think you can hear it in comparison to my embarrassing former work.

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What was it like to record with 10-plus musicians?
It’s absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t have it any other way; I like big compositions with all kinds of layers to tear apart and fall into. I’d be tragically bored in a typical three-piece rock band. The performances I witnessed in Jack’s studio were absolutely beautiful. Most of these guest musicians came in without hearing the music once and laid their parts down in one to two takes. I could not be more grateful to have such helpful and incredibly talented friends.

This album was very reminiscent of a rock opera—was that your intent?
It was not, but I had certainly hoped for the songs to flow well into each other and for it to be an album, not just a collection of songs. I think there is a difference; each song on the album is intentionally placed where it is.

Describe the live show of A Lot Like Birds… What do you think sets you guys apart from anyone else right now?
Our live show was an interesting entity to orchestrate, with the album consisting of so many musicians and all. Originally intended as guests on the album, Cory Lockwood, screamer; Ben Wiacek, guitarist [of post-hardcore project, Discovery of a Lifelong Error]; Athena Koumis, violinist [of folk-rock project, Life as Ghosts]; Juli Lydell, vocalist/keyboardist and Tyler Lydell, drummer [of experimental-folk project, The Dreaded Diamond] have all banded around myself and bassist Michael Litterfield. Making us seven strong, there’s rarely a time when you don’t have something to watch. We arrive to shows with every intent to walk off stage extremely sore, sweaty and out of breath.

What are your plans for 2010? Any ideas for a tour or additional albums?
We are going in to record an acoustic EP called Fuck Morrissey within the next two weeks and after that another full length, because if this took nine months to record, only God knows how long the next one will. As far as touring, we are most definitely going to tour at all costs this summer, hopefully with the backing of a label or management company, but DIY will suffice.

Any last words?
Yes, please listen to the bands whose musicians were guest on this album, including: The Dreaded Diamond, H. Letham, Life as Ghosts, Discovery of a Lifelong Error, Zuhg and our friends The Speed of Sound in Sea Water!

A Lot Like Birds headlined Jan. 16 at the Shire Road Club in Sacramento.
To find out when and where they’re playing next check out www.myspace.com/alotlikebirds