For each month's Featured Release, we ask the principle songwriters for the band to provide commentary for each track on the new record. Here, fans are given some insight into the inspiration, creative developement, and recording process for all the songs on the record.
Song commentary for this album by Martin Johnson.
When I write lyrics, they flow naturally from personal experience and emotions from places, people, and times in my life. We write all our songs' music first, then melody, then lyrics... with lyrical inspiration driven from how the music and melody sonically hits you. Tackling every song is a different beast. It depends on your mood, mindset, and how the chords/riff/vibe of the musical track makes you feel. Our self-titled debut goes through a series of events throughout the track listing, representing the last two years of my life. Though the songs weren't composed with that in mind, once they were all recorded it became apparent that there was a story of love, loss, youth, and angst for the future that was waiting to be told. The songs go from optimistic songs and love songs to loss and breakup songs, ending back with "Holiday", which starts the sequence over and symbolizes moving on and cycles in everyone's life.
1. The Great Escape
This song is about leaving the town I grew up in with my best friends at my side. A graduation-type song with a "we're up to no good, fuck this town, let's do it up for one more night" twist. I wrote it as a last horrah to high school, growing up, and in a sense... the last night of being a kid. It's the end of one chapter... with an outlook on the future... sort of like a prequel to the rest of the record.
2. Five Minutes to Midnight
Picking up where The Great Escape left off, pushing the record on to the next chapter, Five Minutes To Midnight is about jumping on an opportunity and taking a chance. In this circumstance the song is obviously about meeting a girl and being blown away by the first impression, and getting the confidence to make a move.
3. Hero/Heroine
The serious side of Five Minutes to Midnight comes out in this track, as you watch the relationship progress. Hero/Heroine is about how fast life can turn around, and how someone just being there can save you. I am usually very closed-off when it comes to relationships and don't let many people in. For some reason this particular girl turned my life around 180 degrees without even trying.
4. Top of the World
Even though this song subconsciously comes off as a love song (possibly because it was in its first generation), it is about losing my mother to cancer when I was 16, and giving her a promise to find her again somehow.
5.Thunder
With obvious lyrics, this song is about a summer love, and holding on to it even after its over. She will always move me even if we went different paths the song is basically a promise that I will never forget what we had.
6. Me, You and My Medication
This song is about a relationship that relies on other things besides love to stay on its feet... "Medication" could be anythig: sex, drugs, alcohol, prescriptions...anything that changes your mindset to put you in a different place. I know a lot of people that wouldn't hang out unless it's in a partying/"lets get fucked up" kind of situation and I think that kind of sucks.
7. Up Against the Wall
In the context of the record, this is where the relationship/progression of events goes sour. It's an obvious being betrayed/left and learning to deal with it song, and questioning whether it was worth it to begin with.
8. Dance Hall Drug
So many kids are growing up too fast. 13 year olds are giving each other hand jobs in the back of the bus, 14 year olds are already drinking and partying, and kids spend more time worried about growing up and being cool than they do actually growing up and being a kid. This song is basically a lyrical preaching to a 16 year old girl who is stuck wishing she was older, tempted by older guys, sex, grown up situations and drugs. The "Dance Hall Drug" metaphor is like what ecstasy does to your brain. It gives you a false sense of happiness and reality. In her case, her false sense of happiness is an older, tempting guy, who she doesn't have to give her body up to to be happy.
9. Learning to Fall
Learning to fall is "Up Against the Wall" to a larger extreme. It's now just accepting the pain of a breakup, pretending to understand the circumstance, and "learning" to deal with the fact that things might never change back to the way they used to be.
10. Heels Over Head
Everyone loves what they can't have. Someone who keeps you on your toes, even when it hurts. This song is about a girl I used to date who I never really understood, but for some reason I stuck around because she had her own agenda and did her own thing, sometimes playing totally hard-to-get, and I wasn't used to that. The California reference is a metaphor...no she did not hop in a car and head for LA. Though, I should probably say its true because it sounds way sweeter. Oh well.
11. Broken Man
Broken Man is where the tide starts to turn a little bit in the record, back to the full circle recovery. The song is obviously about heartbreak, but at the same time it is about moving on and pushing forward. Even though I was broken from the circumstance, I wasn't going to let it bring me down and I had to move on.
12. Holiday
This song brings you back to the beginning of the record. Starting over, moving on...running away. I have the hardest time sticking to things. I constantly re-invent myself and push my focus in different directions. This song kind of lays my erratic personality on the table...sort of as a "take it or leave it." And then it starts all over...
...time to write another record, I guess. |
