A N D Y
PARTY PRACTICE When I decided to make the album with the running theme of a party, I was having trouble coming up with ideas for things that would happen at one. So me and my friends got together in the garage and smoked cigarettes and drank beers and thought about what would happen at a party. There’ s the person who gets drunk too fast and the people who are too sober; there’ s the part of the night that gets a little greasy, and then the calm afterwards.“ Martha Sways” was written about ending the night in a living room somewhere and slow dancing. I think I always outlast the party a little bit. I like the calm afterwards. My favorite part is sitting on the couch later and just talking shit.
EMBARRASSMENT“ To You” is a song about opening up to someone and being humiliated. I can think of specific times that happened to me, though this particular instance didn’ t. There’ s a character that goes through most of the party named Jeremy. For Jeremy, it’ s probably near to the end of the night and this [ other ] guy’ s a little too drunk and decides to talk to him about their friendship. I knew that it was going to be him sharing a certain thing and then trying to go back on what he said, so my first lyric was about it all being a big joke. It’ s a fear of perceiving an outcome to be one way and then feeling like you’ ve totally read someone wrong.
REVISION The song that went through the most revisions was“ Eyes of Them All.” I wrote it two summers ago and never came up with good lyrics for it. I struggled with that one. I eventually changed the key and changed the arrangement.
Another one that went through a lot of revisions was“ The Magician.” Originally, it was a piano song, really sparse and quiet with big, five-second breaks. It was horribly spaced out. I demoed it like that, sat with it for a little while. Then I recorded drums and bass over it. It was still really spaced out. I just couldn’ t figure out why I didn’ t like it. What I usually do when I come to that conclusion is to strip away the chording instrument. I took away the piano and changed it to acoustic guitar with a looped beat behind it. There were these big fills; it was really dramatic. The intro now is just this chord for a really long time. It’ s still really spacious but I’ ve found a better way for it to keep its momentum and continue to move.
THE PRESTIGE OF“ THE MAGICIAN” I think the first line I wrote for that song—“ Do you find it gets a little easier each time you make it disappear?”— gave me the picture of a magician. That decided what the song was going to be about. I pictured a sweating, nervous magician going through his act and trying to be like,“ Tah-dah!” at some point.“ The Magician” doesn’ t really have anything to do with the party theme so it was more about how I was feeling when I wrote it. I guess that would have been two or three years ago, at a time when I had no idea what I was doing with my life— trying to play music and trying to keep a personal life together but not knowing how. That was the idea behind the chorus:“ Just a shaking hand without a concrete plan.”
PICKING UP TOOLS AND THE TEMPO I’ ve played instruments my whole life but I never played in school band or anything. Originally I played drums; in grade nine, I was playing drums in a band. My guitar player taught me how to play“ Smells Like Teen Spirit” [ on a guitar ]. I was a big Blink-182 fan; we played a lot of punk covers. I used to be a pretty good drummer: single kick, fast-foot. There’ s no fast-foot [ on The Party ]. I’ ve lost my fast-foot. Now I just have a steady foot [ laughs ].
I think I will write faster songs eventually. It takes more confidence in songwriting to write fast songs. I think it’ s easy to write slow songs. The more confident I become on piano, the easier it is to push what I can do on it. I’ m really used to playing it safe with long, drawn out chords.“ Quite Like You” is the fastest song on the album, and it’ s still not very fast.
MY NEW GUITAR I just got this guitar made by Collings, from Austin. It replicates an old [ Gibson ] Kalamazoo— it’ s brand new but it’ s made in the same way as those Depression-era guitars, with the same body style and wood. I’ ve had shitty guitars that are similar but this one is nice and new and it stays in tune. Most of the things I buy are old and quirky so whenever I buy a new one it’ s kind of sterile. It hasn’ t had frequencies reverberating in it for fifty years. [ To break in a new guitar ] I just play it. When some people buy a new one, I’ ve heard they’ ll hang it in the closet and play white noise at it for a week to get all the frequencies vibrating in the wood and make it sound different. It’ s super cheesy.