In early 2010, newly-launched Chicago station CHIRP Radio put out a call to local musicians to help create shows. Post-punk singer-songwriter David Safran and his friend Aaron "Vealchop" Allietta, then half of indietronica darlings P.G.D.M., responded by pitching a Loveline-esque radio call-in program fittingly called Veal with Safran. The twist? Instead of educating listeners, the co-hosts would offer terrible dating advice.

CHIRP programmers didn't greenlight Veal with Safran. But a few months later, the provocative songwriter and his versatile band swung by a North Center attic to record an intimate and occasionally rambunctious live session. With song titles such as "The Life of an Amorous Man" and "Nothing Beyond the Kisses," it appeared that Safran had brought his own version of questionable relationship advice to CHIRP.

At the time of this taping, Safran had recently released "Adult Things," a breakthrough single featuring guitar virtuoso Andreas Kapsalis. The surprise song helped Safran carve out a cultish niche as a songwriter’s songwriter. (In 2016, the Atlantic named “Adult Things” as its Track of the Day.) Up to that point, however, Safran's music career had more downs than ups. As a teenager, Safran co-founded acclaimed garage-punk trio the Audreys—once described by Chicago Reader as "what the Strokes should've been"—and co-wrote the band's biggest song "Hardwired." (Later recorded by NYC punk icon Ivan Julian, co-founder of Richard Hell and the Voidoids.) Yet like the band's first drummer Patrick Stump, Safran left the Audreys before they momentarily became an integral part of Chicago’s early aughts garage rock resurgence.

Written out of a rising band that Newcity Magazine called a "blood-pumping modern rock machine," Safran reemerged as a solo artist during the city's burgeoning alt-country community. Despite local buzz and label interest, Safran held back releasing his debut record in 2005 and a follow-up in 2007. Eventually he stopped playing live altogether. Second-guessing his early material, Safran stamped out a hot streak and walked away.

"Adult Things," then, was both a reinvention and a gleeful reintroduction. When Vocalo Radio debuted the single in 2010, host Jesse Menendez noted that he listened to it "ten times," genuinely surprised that 25-year-old Safran wasn't in his seventies.

Safran and a formidable backing band kick off a CHIRP session with a muscular “Adult Things” before ripping into Cuban-influenced folk-punk, a wry country waltz, and ragged pop-rock. And yet, for reasons that still remain unclear, CHIRP never aired this session. It would take another thirteen years and Safran's comeback EP The Little Recidivist hitting #18 on the station's top 50 chart to dig up the old recordings for an official release.

Mastered by Alance Ward, previously the drummer for All Smiles, this raw, rollicking live session captures a twenty-something songwriter and a new radio station asserting themselves as unpredictable and unique forces in Chicago’s independent music scene.