You’re imagining As Smart As We Are, a book-cum-CD, the title of which comes from the opening line from the final track, 'Water,' by Jonathan Lethem. Many of North America’s bestselling and prize-winning authors, have contributed original lyrics (and in some cases their musical skills) to this CD of music by Brooklyn lit-rock band One Ring Zero.

The project began when Michael Hearst of the band One Ring Zero, soon after moving to Manhattan in 2001, sought out a small store he’d heard about that was founded by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The band was invited to perform at McSweeney's events and soon met Rick Moody, who invited them to perform and collaborate with him. Thus began a cascade of authors offering to write songs for the band. Winners of the Booker Prize, MacArthur Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award lined up to provide their song-writing services to the project.

Said Neil Gaiman of the project, 'I liked the kind of lineup he [Hearst] was putting together. It was sufficiently odd enough to be interesting. It’ll be a great Trivial Pursuit question someday: ‘What does Margaret Atwood have in common with, say, Daniel Handler?’ It was something like a sort of cabaret version of They Might Be Giants. It’s literate. Genuinely funny. And it’s odd. It feels like being in a very cool author anthology.'


About the Music
Using instruments ranging from claviola to toy piano, theremin to kitty litter (yes, One Ring Zero find music in the quotidian and the sublime. They acknowledge a wide variety of musical influences, from Hungarian folk to klezmer, to Kurt Weil, and have been described as Nino Rota (the composer for most of Fellini’s films) on processed sugar.

Lyrics by: