This song is a bit unsuspecting, hidden at the end of the album. It isn’t complicated or flashy and it was basically two song ideas that were put together to make one. But somehow it is one of my favourites. Here are some facts about Won’t Be Missing You:
- At Byron’s suggestion, the lyrics of the finale changed from “I’ll be missing you again” to “I won’t be missing you again.”
- There is an amazing cello line in the verses that we didn’t include on the album because it made it a little too pretty.
- Hugh plays his bass through three (count ‘em) three distortion pedals for the outro which is why there is that crazy distorted squeeling going into it.
- The beat in the final verse is made by a 70’s drum simulation pedal that we found randomly in Byron’s place and just had to use it somewhere (I think it’s used in the background of Baby Steps as well).
- This is the first song that Hugh started playing keys on.
- The “ahs” at the end actually started as an arrangement idea we recorded so that we would remember it. We ended up just using those vocals. Once we doubled and repeated it at the end of the song we knew it would be the album ender.
[Listen to Won't Be Missing You]
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Drowning is our oldest surviving song. It was on a CD of ideas I mailed to the guys before we were a band and it was the second of our songs that Hugh learned on bass. I remember he and I played it at a coffee house and I broke a string. I was probably playing inappropriately hard for the setting (although I think that it impressed Steve who was in the audience). The song has changed a bit – we’ve stripped it right down and substituted lyrics here and there – but it’s mostly the same as when we played it at our very first show.
The version on this album actually uses a couple tracks from our independent recordings. Both guitars were recorded in Hugh’s parent’s house and the cello we recorded guerilla style at Queen’s University in Kingston. We basically put together a portable recording studio and snuck into the Sutherland Room, a large, old, wood-lined room in the University Center. We did eventually get kicked out – just as we finished recording for this song!
Oh, and that thing you can hear in the background that sounds like a super-gigantic metallic sonar or something, it’s actually a pen being tapped on a plate. But that’s a different story altogether.
[Listen to Drowning]
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