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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As a young band trying to flush out our sound, the dirty word was always “Coldplay.” Not because we dislike the band, or the comparison to such a successful band, but because it was so easy for people to lump four guys with a piano into that box. Did we (and do we still) take some cues from them? Sure. But we didn’t want to just be a facsimile; rather something different – something unique that encompassed the four quartered pie chart of our different tastes. On the road to achieving this, and as the Coldplay comparisons slowed, the dirty word just changed…to “Linehaul.” (For those unaware, the band was called Linehaul prior to Winhara).

To me, Science is where Linehaul died. And Winhara was born.

Science was one of the last songs for writing / structure to be completed during the HBLS recording sessions and is one of only a handful of songs that did not appear on the final Linehaul record. To me, Science is the song that truly marks Winhara becoming its own entity. Gone were the days of the CP70 piano and blues scales; they’d been replaced with computer driven keyboards along side guitars that sound like…well computer driven keyboards. The vocals had new attitude, the rhythm section sounded deeper and other instruments were added to round out the set up. Dan, a long time advocate of clean piano sounds, now found himself with (and using) a litany of distortion, synth and effects pedals. Not to mention Hugh finally using his many distortion pedals tastefully – and getting full approval to do so. A second keyboard was added to the mix and Kent’s ever expanding stomp-box kit continued to expand. When Science was complete, we had arrived at OUR sound.

If you ever stumble upon an old interview on YouTube done by Studio Q in Kingston you will hear Hugh saying, “it’s a progression, I think you can finally start to hear what we’ve been trying to do on previous recordings” in regards to our final Linehaul album. At the time, although as a band we knew where we wanted our sound to go and could see it happening, we were still using the Linehaul sound-scape. Science was the true catalyst to our progression. Now we are the band we knew we could be.

P.

[Listen to Science]

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