Sneak Preview - Copernicus and Me

Each Monday until our second full-length album Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys is released in late-November, I'll be posting a song off the record on our myspace page for you to preview and enjoy and talking a little bit about each song on this here blog.

Week three: "Copernicus and Me."

This was the last song I wrote for the album and once we all learned the song and played it a few times, I thought it would be shoved towards the back of the album and rarely make an appearance in our live set. It's dynamically static which is unusual for my songwriting, but after we got mixes of the songs on the record, it really stood out and was oddly catchy for having so many timing trip-ups in it. It's now one of my top two favorite songs on the record.

I didn't do as much screwing around with weird guitar noises on this album as I did our first, but one thing I messed with was the pitch shifter function on my Boss PS-5. I scooped up two individual notes in stereo right before the chorus. I also played around with slide noises on the intro and mid-song breakdown, parts of the song where I finally channeled me some motherflippin' Shannon Wright. Fun!

I guess there's not technically a chorus in this song, but the line, "With whom did you wake up?" was one of the only recycled bits from songwriting past on this album, except when I originally wrote the line it was, "Who did you wake up with?" It bugged me that I ended a line with the word, "with" but hopefully it doesn't sound too pretentious to start a line with the words, "With whom." Sometimes I hate writing lyrics. But the pretentiousness fits the meaning of the song. The lyrics are actually a big confession about how much of a jerk I am, and how much of a jerk I was to someone I had already hurt in the past. "With whom did you wake up?" isn't a line sung out of jealousy, but out of arrogance. I'm a dick and nobody should EVER date me*. Seriously.

And not to be all self-congratulatory, but this song has one my favorite phrases I've ever written, "Sing my credo of orchestrated tales / flip my wrist / direct clandestine wails / we relate within the walls." Here's the whole song:

I am the sun
I am the light
I am the atoms that you excite
It’s about me
It’s not about you
Stop being all talk
Tell me something new

Black is the new black
And I’m back to the start
Of burning bridges
And breaking hearts
It’s about me
It’s not about you
Stop being all talk
Tell me something new
Tell me something

With whom did you wake up?

I am the cause
I am the effect
I have no misconceptions about
how I made this mess
It’s about me
It’s not about you
Stop being all talk
Tell me something new
Tell me something

I am the dark
I am the moon
I am enclosed in a
Foul, dank cocoon
It’s about me
It’s not about you
Equivocate by blaming you
Oh déjà vu

It’s not what happens in the room
It’s what contained within the walls

Sing my credo of orchestrated tales
Flip my wrist, direct clandestine wails
We relate within the walls
I’ll take what I can get
Once again you take the fall
Do I push or do you fall?

So, there you go. Thanks to everyone who came out to my solo show at the Mars Bar last Thursday! I can't believe our next show is going to be our secret show with our new drummer, Weston. IT'S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME WE PLAY A SHOW AS A BAND.

*With one giant king cobra exception.