Eric Silverman, Courtesy photo.

Eric Silverman had his initial brush with success as the guitarist with San Francisco indie pop band Heartwatch, but he’s finally back Friday with the release of his debut solo EP, a guitar-driven journey to his own roots.

Silverman has already released the video for “As My Country Drifted Away (I Got Stoned),” the first taste off Rookie. The song mourns the decline of America over a punch-drunk and slightly psychedelic groove. Today, RIFF premieres two more songs from the record. The title track  summons both nostalgia and embarrassment from your past life.

“Sometimes you look back at yourself and get so embarrassed, like, ‘Geez, I can’t believe I was so naive; I didn’t know anything! I know so much more now,'” Silverman told RIFF. “Then other times you look back and think about how everything was better when you were younger [and] you could do anything! It’s got that ‘Glory Days’ feel, and you just keep thinking about what you used to be instead of just being who you are now.”

On “Losing Touch,” meanwhile, he literally confesses a loss of faith in God over a funky wah-wah guitar and saxophone synth interplay.

“I was listening [to] … ‘Have You Been Good to Yourself‘ by Johnnie Frierson, and I wrote the lyrics as a sort of response to some of those questions [asked in the Frierson song],” he said. “We wanted to make it feel like a Bill Withers song in outer space, and it was incredibly fun to make. I got to bring in a lot of my different influences, and [vocalists] Lauren Gould and Rachel Howard brought a ton of soul to it.”

Rookie was produced by Grammy-nominated producer Damien Lewis. The two met while Silverman was in Heartwatch. The two had planned to work on songs for a future project, but instead wrote and recorded the songs on the EP within a week.