Some songs come easy.  An idea will spark a writing session, ideas will flow, and by the end of one or two sessions, a song will exist in very close to it’s final form.

15 Minutes was not one of these songs.

What eventually became the album’s dark, epic opening track began as a piano ballad called ‘Let Go’.  Dan showed me the song and I set out to put a bass line to it.  So far so good.  The intro/verse line came easily and remains essentially the same as you hear on ‘Hold Back Light Show’.  A few sessions with the full band and the song sounded pretty much done.

We recorded ‘Let Go’ during sessions for our an independent album we were working on at the time.  We got all the way to mixing the song, but it became obvious that it just wasn’t working.  The chorus was falling flat and the song overall was too much of a ballad.  An honest friend of ours laid it out; “Well, it will probably get you girls, but ‘meh.’”

Now sometimes in this situation a song would just be left to die, but we dug the verse and melody.  ‘Let Go’ was stripped down and rebuilt.  I think in the end we probably went through 4 or 5 fully written chorus’ before arriving at one that fit.  Of course with the new musical direction of the song, the old lyrics no longer fit.  What Dan came back with was dark and edgy.  Gone was the piano ballad.  15 Minutes was born.

In the recording sessions for H.B.L.S., Byron pushed 15 minutes to be even bigger, even heavier.  It ended up being one of the hardest songs to mix, with so much going on that needed to be tamed.  I lost count of the number of times the question “Hey Byron, how’s it going?” was met with the response of “Oh, not bad.  Just tried yet another mix of 15 Minutes.”

The song you hear on Hold Back Light Show is the result of over two years of evolution, some easy, most not.  In the end, some songs are worth fighting for.

Check out 15 Minutes on our myspace.  Let me us know what you think.

As you may or may not have known, we spent last Friday at Canterbury, a studio hidden away at the base of Dufferin St. The goal of the session was to rerecord bed tracks using our prerecorded tracks as a template. Why rerecord? Experience has taught me that (at least for this band) there is no such thing as simply recording some songs and being done. The process of writing songs and capturing them to some recorded format always takes time; not an issue in itself. Over that time however, the project never stops evolving. Exhibit A: a planned 1 month recording of a 4 song demo which 6 months later had morphed into the full length album We Are Not Normal.

Rehearsing, playing and recording the current batch of songs has caused them to evolve to a point where the original bed recordings didn’t capture all that we wanted them too anymore. I hope this doesn’t make us sound spoiled. We were lucky enough to have a second chance at it. You only get to make your debut album once, right?

Our day at Canterbury was more than worth it. The size and isolation options of the studio allowed us to play together, while still keeping all the audio discrete. This time we really captured the energy of the songs. I also witnessed some of the most awesome noise I have ever heard coming from the room where Kent was locked away.

I’ve posted some of our photos on flickr.

Now I know that there are at least one or two people with the following question on their minds: “well Hugh, that’s all good, and we’re happy for you, really. But when do we get to hear a finished CD?”

Let me side step that by saying this: I was listening to old Linehaul recordings yesterday – right back to stuff from The No Itacifaxes Sessions, and up to We Are Not Normal – and let me tell you, you can hear the ideas, or at least their beginnings in those recordings. But we have definitely come a long way in the past 4 years. Stick with us a little longer. I promise it will be worth the wait.