Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Things that rule/things that suck

Things that rule:
-sleeping on the futon at Metropolitan sound next to the space heater
-taking breaks from mixing and having Alex give me the dirt on At the Drive-In, Mars Volta, and other bands he's recorded
-the bar directly under the studio serves a hot dog with every beer

Things that suck:
-the hardcore band that practices directly below the control room
-the power supply on Griffin's laptop, which i am currently borrowing, stops charging the battery every few minutes and I have to play with the cord until i find the sweet spot so it doesn't shut off...again
-every restaurant around here only takes cash, which i am completely out of

Things are well. We did a lot of work on the 5/4 song (potentially titled "We've not seen the worst of this yet"), and we're going to attack it today with fresh ears and make a few changes requested by the home team. I'm very impressed by Alex Newport's attention to detail and work ethic. There's going to be a lot of love on this record.

The next song we will get to today is "New Song 1" (seriously, we need to start inventing some titles). This is a fast song. If anybody remembers the song "There's No I in Werewolves" by the Texas Chainsaw Mass Choir, this is like what it would sound like if we covered it.* For those of you who didn't happen to be going to art space shows in St. Louis between 2002 and 2004, this song is a little harder to describe. It's probably the only one on the record that could be described as "sassy". It's a fairly straightforward verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge number with weird instrument sounds and lyrics about drugs.

Our friend Justin Price sent us a text message while we were writing and said he wanted us to write a song that didn't have the gospel beat, but felt like an indie rock gospel song. Somehow i think this song is what he wanted.

*This statement is actually untrue. "No I in Werewolves" by TCMC is one of 2 songs we've ever covered live and our version didn't sound anything like this song. We played it once to tribute TCMC after they broke up, changed their name to White Rabbits and eventually moved to Brooklyn. While we were recording in Portland, we saw them on Letterman. The only other song we've covered live was "She" by Green Day.

1 comment:

BB McDougal said...

Does any form of video or audio recording of you guys covering "She" exist anywhere? Because I would imagine that would be really cool to see/hear.