Track-By-Track Guide to 'How To Be A Human Being'
âLife Itselfâ
This one actually started off as a dark, slow, moody track. Quite insular. But eventually we realized there was a cheekiness to the lyrics that we hadnât really explored, so we injected a sense of optimism into the music. The character that this track is about is a sci-fi obsessed dude who spends most of his time alone inventing strange things and writing stories about ray guns or looking for aliens on Google maps. We made him a website. But thatâs what the chords and sound effects were inspired by. Old sci-fi films/series. I also got a bit obsessed with Lollywood music (music from Pakistani films), and thats where the idea for the drums came from.
âYouthâ
The idea for this one came from a story someone told me once. They were telling me about their child, and something awful had happened to them. She was cryingâbut at the same time the memories that they had from that previous life made her so happyâso she was also smiling. That combination of emotions kind of made me feel like my heart was being ripped apart but also optimistic in a weird way. She had found a way to see happiness in this awful thing that had happened to her. That combination of emotions is what this song is getting at. Have a look at this characterâs website, too.
âSeason 2 Episode 3â
Everyone knows someone like the character from this song. If you donât, then itâs you. But there are lots of references to different psychedelic cartoons in this oneâsonically and lyricallyâincluding Adventure Time. That show is crazy.
âPork Sodaâ
I heard a homeless man talking to someone once and say âpineapples are in my head.â In retrospect, Iâm pretty sure it wasnât actually those words, but I thought it was at the time, and it kind of stuck with me. The opening of the song is meant to sound like youâre outside on the street, and you can hear a group of people chanting this song. The drum sounds are made from old bins and trash pieces of metal I found around the studio. Kind of like those street drummers use. All that is meant to set the scene for the story.
âMamaâs Gunâ
I donât use samples very often. I only like using them if they bring something to the table, aside from just musicâa context and a further depth to the actual meaning of the song. This song is mainly about mental health, and I remembered this song by The Carpenters called âMr. Guder.â It fit the atmosphere musically, while the song âMr. Guderâ itself was about an odd character of sorts, and then on top of that, Karen Carpenterâs story added another dimension to the lyrics. if you donât know the story, you should look it up. Itâs important and very sad, and it started a general social dialogue about mental illness which is to this day still a subject matter that we avoid far too much.
âCane Shugaâ
This is the only track on the record that didnât start with lyrics and vocal melody. It started with the beat and the heavy drums. I let the beat spin and wrote stream of consciousness lyrics through a vocoder for this one to try to capture a certain mentality you might have when youâre a bit fucked up. When you start speaking what seems like gibberishâbut maybe that gibberish is actually quite revealing.
â[Premade Sandwiches]â
This is a spoken word interlude. My favorite word in the album is in this: âMcFuck.â Itâs something that someoneâs gotten at McDonaldâs. Here it is used in a sentence: âWhat the McFuck are you eating?â
âThe Other Side Of Paradiseâ
This is musically my favorite track on the record, I think. The chords are quite bizarre, and there are some mad arrangement and structural things going on. And the beat was super fun to make. Itâs gonna be fun live!
âTake A Sliceâ
This track is about someone with a lot of lust. Itâs as sleazy as Iâll ever get in lyrics. But everyone has that inside them somewhere, even if itâs only a tiny bit. And it comes out from time to time. For some people, itâs out all the time.
âPoplar Stâ
This song is meant to open with a kind of musical/lyrical image of a place. A little guitar hook and a floating vocal line that all seems quite peaceful, but things get more and more twisted as the song goes on. The guitar starts doing weirder things, the music builds tension, and then the whole thing flips on itâs head at the end. And you find that maybe that place isnât what you first expected it was.
âAgnesâ
As soon as I started writing it, I knew it would be the album closer. This is my favorite song on the record. And the saddest song I will ever write.
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