Life In Parallel Track-by-Track Breakdown

Life In Parallel

I wonder how often the opening track is the last one to be written before recording…in any case, that’s what happened here. We had come to a consensus on the album title a few months before we finished writing and needed a couple tracks to fill it out. Tom [Schlatter, guitarist and vocalist] sent all of us a demo of this song with him doing vocals on it and we all thought it was a really strong opener. We sent it to Geoff Rickly [of Thursday] when we finished tracking. I wasn't sure what he was going to add, but I was excited for what he came up with. I think we were all overjoyed with what he added because it made the song a bit more delicate and gave it more range.

Methodist

Lyrically, “Methodist” addresses institutional dogmatism and the separation required to look at our systems, whether they be justice or equality, by stepping away from inherent nationalism for a clear-eyed analysis of what’s wrong and what can be improved. I wanted to cover the commodification of our everyday existence, how our society has been built upon greed and profit and as such devalued the human experience.

Wake Today

One of the first few songs we wrote together as a group. Paul [Alan, guitarist and vocalist] wrote a lot of this one. When I heard the music, I was able to add words to it pretty quickly, which was cool since this one is kind of a waltz and I don’t typically write for stuff like that. The chugging part right in the middle is my favorite part. I think there was some legitimate concern that one or all of us would get injured at the bottom of a pig pile when we started playing it live. It’s been our set opener for quite a while now.

Scorched Earth Harvest

This is definitely one of my favorite songs off the album. I’m pretty certain that this was another one that didn’t need much changing from the way it was originally written. I demoed vocals for this in the spare bedroom at my house and they sounded pretty bad, but after we rehearsed it a few times, I found my spots. I had a really visual take for the lyrics when I wrote them. I tried to imagine one of those tent churches that they have out in fields in the Midwest and the Deep South and what it would be like to pray for the rapture and then step back out in the world and see it. When we recorded this, I remember sitting in the booth watching John [Beyer, drummer] do his drum takes and just totally crushing it. I think this is his best performance on the album.

Endless Beige

Got a fair amount of waltz practice with “Wake Today” so this one came a bit easier than I had anticipated. I didn’t plan on it, but the first half of the song is a lyrically dense mourning of a spiritually bankrupt nation of drifters and it closes with repetitive angry barks. This was the first track I did vocals for. I got there early and got them done before the rest of the guys showed up because I knew it was gonna be the most challenging. I’m glad I did because it set the tone for the rest of the day.

Bloodthirsty

The original title for this song was “Cernunnos Crucifixion”, but no one could pronounce that, so we changed it to “Bloodthirsty.” This was another one of the early songs we wrote together. Tom was pumped that another vegan was in the band and the feeling was mutual, so we kinda conspired to write a vegan song.

As is common with me, I’m not really great at figuring out odd-timing, but I’m in a band with 4 other people who are good at it, so some of the parts in this song I needed help figuring it out. Everyone stepped up to get me through it. When I was recording the vocals, I was starting to feel the strain. Tom suggested that I take a break, but I knew that if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to jump right back in and be effective, so I convinced him to let me try it one more time. That’s the take you hear. I finished vocals for the whole album after that.

Axis

Another song that I needed help fitting lyrics into. We were actually working on this one right up until we recorded it. Paul and I got together the week of recording, went line by line through each song and “Axis” got a lot of treatment right up until the end.

Speculation

This was a song that Tom had pretty much written. I tried to write lyrics and they weren’t working out, so Tom sent me his lyrics and a demo of his vocals and it made sense to go with what he already had. I love his vocals on this.

Bluejay

Easily the most painful song I’ve written. I’m the only dad in this band. My kid was going through some stuff at her school and it was just really painful for me because there just wasn’t a whole lot I could do to make it better for her. The idea of her being lonely and sad just completely gutted me. It took me 3 days to write it. Tom sent us the demo for that song and I knew it had to be powerful and these were some of the most powerful emotions I ever felt. I cried every minute that I was writing it, and I have a hard time talking about it.

One of the people that I lean on for fatherly support is my good friend Jon Tumillo from Folly. We started families around the same time and so we bounce a lot off each other. I felt comfortable asking him because I figured we’d probably be in the booth together and if I broke down, he’s one of the few people I’d feel ok doing it in front of. But to have him on the track and recording together just brought back so many great memories in our years of friendship and it gave me something to be hopeful about. If my daughter is anything like me, then she’ll have some great friends like I do and she’ll make memories like I did and they will be those friends who will be there for her like mine are.

Strangely, “Bluejay” was one of the last songs that we wrote before booking studio time. This song just had so many great parts that come together so beautifully at the end. For me it ended up being one of those songs where I was just so grateful to have contributed meaningfully to.

Waves Of Piety

A few years ago I started to try to look at the world through a generational lens. I’m like a lot of people that feel that the American Dream maybe passed them by and I put a lot of that on the boomers. So lyrically, that’s what the song is about.

This is one of the first ones we wrote together and I remember listening to the demo version of it and being in total awe of how powerful it was on its own without vocals. When I first heard it, it reminded me of a lot of the Envy songs that I like, so short of spoken word parts, I did what I thought Tetsuya from Envy would have done if this song were handed to him.

It was a lock that Ryann [Slauson] was gonna make an appearance on this record. Such a great friend to us and so talented and creative. When he sent over what he recorded, we tried putting it in a couple different places, but I’m pretty sure Buzz suggested it before Waves and it’s hard to fathom that we didn’t try that first. Adam Kaniper contributing some organ to this song also gave it some real depth.