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It occurs to me that my last few posts have been exegeses of tunes from Things We Would Rather Lose... So... if it ain't broke... (side note: "ain't" is showing up as a spelling error... which seems strange to me. We've managed to boldly accept split infinitives... why can't we accept ain't? For instance... "I ain't got no swimming in my show.") 

Today's track is the title tune... Things We Would Rather Lose.

This tune... well, it's the title track for a reason. Throughout the album, there's a palpable sense of wanting so badly to get through grief, to get on to the new... but being pulled back again and again, almost (well, not almost... more like totally) against one's will to sorrow and pain.

I wrote TWWRL about a year ago... fall/winter 2007. It was provoked/inspired by a weekend trip Andrea and I took to Madison to visit my uncle. I hadn't been back to Madison in some time... and it was a really wonderful weekend, both in a general sense (beautiful weather, great times) and a more personal sense for me and Andrea. It was also tough in some ways... not exactly tough but... emotional.

Therapeutic. Intense.

It got me thinking and feeling about the past... in a healthy and productive way I guess... it was an instance (maybe the most or second most significant to that point) of me feeling strong enough to consider and come to terms with the past... or at least try to. And to look forward.

Musically, it's a very simple, pretty song. The chord progressions (and this is not by accident) are echoes of two Burn Rome Burn songs... the verse is related to Bottle Boy, the chorus to Wait. The relationship with those two songs... well, I don't know if I need to write about that right now.

But beyond the thematic and place connections (Bottle Boy, especially, was about a drive back to Madison about 5 years ago and the nostalgia it engendered), this was also a period of time when I was dealing with a more concrete end to BRB... which obviously involves its own process of grieving and moving on.

The recording: this is the first song I've written that has been recorded with no guitar. That's right, I play zero guitar on it. During our first sessions at I.V., Darren recorded some amazingly musical drums, and then added some organ. Finally, he put down some Harmonium, an accordion-like instrument you can hear on the Jeff Buckley song Lover, You Should Have Come Over.

At the Gravity sessions, Drew recorded some gorgeous, inspired and fairly spontaneous acoustic piano, which really replaced (and improved on) the acoustic guitar part I had initially written. Jay added some minimal bass (an organ acts as bass for much of it) and we were on to vocals. I'm not sure which vocals Jay wound up using but... we took one swing at it one morning in the B Room at I.V., and another at about 1:00 in the morning the night of our beer-fueled recording of Almost Gone.  Finally, Jay tracked some Beach Boys-inspired background vocals.

So... the lyrics: I know I keep saying this but I'm really proud of these... I wanted this song to be evocative but also concrete and direct. Again, nothing within this song happens by accident... I really strove to make every line mean something, every word important... the Bob Dylan approach of having every line be strong enough to be the first line... not that I accomplished that but that was the goal.

So many allusions... to our trip, to our histories, to songs from previous projects, to songs on TWWRL... Some words and their connections:

*** We dreamt of birds all blue and loud That fly through the night and hang from the clouds *** I have an attachment to the color blue, obviously (vid: the chorus in this tune, Wait, The Blue, etc.), but this line is about the birds. So to speak.

*** And come to us here in these moments of fear As the skyline appears and the road falls away *** A concrete connection and attempt to replicate the first verse of Bottle Boy (Aimless AM radio. spinning through the miles/I'm falling into silence, I've gone another mile/When the feeling of suspense meets the skyline heading north/Going down that road you've gone down many times before).

*** Out in the darkness, I'm spinning in place With my eyes to the sky and my hands to my face *** Somehow, I managed to preserve the rhyme scheme from the first verse, almost exactly, down to "fly/night" and "eyes/sky."

*** Somewhere between all the dead and the dreams You're waiting for me in the static. *** "Between" and "static" echo "live somewhere in between" from Wait, and "I'm in between the static" from Bottle Boy. I was also taken by the somewhat unconventional rhyming scheme of the verses... I think it really helps stress the last line of both verses...

*** Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose *** Allusions to "Fade into the blue" from Wait and others... I also like the ambiguity in listening to "everything dear"... it could also be heard "everything, Dear," if that makes sense... and maybe that's really a better take on it anyway. Eh... maybe not.

*** The highways are burning, the night's at an end But we're still sleeping and dreaming of when The skyscrapers fell, the smoke and the smell Of the dark devouring light and love *** This verse... well... so many things... "highways are burning" is a reference to an unrecorded BRB song... And the last two lines... I'll save the "skyscrapers" piece for when I write about Skyscraper Hearts but something about the sound of these lines... the sibilance of the first and then the consonance of the second in "dark devouring" and "light and love"... and "light and love" is a tie-in to the line in More: "Into every loss, some life, some love is going to come." 

So that's that. All that... And here are the lyrics without my ramblings interspersed:

THINGS WE WOULD RATHER LOSE We dreamt of birds, all blue and loud That fly through the night and hang from the clouds And come to us here in these moments of fear As the skyline appears and the road falls away Out in the darkness, I'm spinning in place With my eyes to the sky and my hands to my face Somewhere between all the dead and the dreams You're waiting for me in the static Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose The highways are burning, the night's at an end And we're still sleeping and dreaming of when The skyscrapers fell, the smoke and the smell Of the dark devouring light and love Oh, everything dear disappears Into the blue Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose Oh, we're left holding on to The things we'd rather lose

jbg