Ten years ago this weekend, Modus Aurora released The Ghosts Inside of Us, our only full-length album and, in a way, my college thesis.
My high school band didn’t survive the senior summer and my high school relationship didn’t last much longer, so I was a little directionless when John and I started trading song ideas in the lounge at Munsell Hall. He was into U2 and played like The Edge, and I envisioned a soaring indie rock band with shimmering guitars and huge choruses, something bigger than any band I had played in before. We were fast friends and good collaborators, and when it felt like it was working, we recruited Katie and Cale to fill out the lineup. Through 2011 and 2012, we released a self-titled EP and a couple demos.
We also played a lot, mostly with bands that sounded nothing like us. Basement shows with punk bands, coffee shops with hardcore bands, school events with cover bands. We got to open for some of our heroes (Spitalfield, The Forecast, State Lines, The Front Bottoms, Real Friends) and made lifelong friends in that mismatched local scene.
There wasn’t really a specific starting point for The Ghosts Inside of Us. Some of the songs had been kicking around for a while, and some were written late in the process. I think we recorded it from late 2012 through mid-2013, but I don’t know for sure. I strangely have very few specific memories of making the album. Since the “studio” was just my parents’ house, where we hung out and practiced and did laundry most weekends anyway, it all kind of blends together.
When it came time for mixing and mastering, we reached out to Matt Kennedy. He had played guitar in The Graduate, the greatest band to ever come out of central Illinois and probably the only band that the four us universally agreed on.
We celebrated the album release with a huge free show at Firehouse with all of our friends. I played three sets in a row (the first Troyathalon?). It wasn’t exactly a triumph — John’s amp blew a fuse and we played pretty badly. My most vivid memory of the night is waving to Liesi from the stage. We didn’t know each other well yet, but I was so excited she was there. Ten years later, that certainly worked out.
The writing was probably on the wall for the band at that point. When we finally released The Ghosts Inside of Us, John and I were in our last semester of college. Katie was already living in Chicago, and I was making plans to move there. John was headed to Florida. Cale had two more years of school left. We only played one more show and recorded two more songs, which were probably our best work. Seems like it always happens that way — not with a bang but with a whimper.
So much of my time in college is wrapped up in this band and this album. The friends I still see and the ones I haven’t talked to since graduation. The songs written in dorm rooms on yard sale guitars that wouldn’t stay in tune. The shows, whether in basements or on big stages. The time spent trying to get people to listen and to care as much as I did about the music. I don’t regret a second of it.
If you were there, thank you for being a part of it all. If you want to listen, all of our music is up on Bandcamp and the various streaming services. I’m sure I still have a box of the CDs somewhere.
“Who am I without the lie of who I want to be?”
Troy Sennett 