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Two Rooms & A Palm Tree
EP – Production Notes
We started a batch of recordings in June 2004. My deadline was September 30th for a finished product and we almost met it – the finished EP was sent out (or uploaded, as it were) for duplication on October 11th in order to get copies in time for a release show at KC’s Dive on October 22nd. The EP was originally entitled “Kids”, but we decided to make it a bit more interesting a few days before sending it out. Another 7 or 8 songs from this session remain to be finished… We decided to include a couple “bonus” tracks on the EP (sort of a Elvis Costello Rhino reissue thing to do, I guess), mainly because there were a few songs floating around from after our last big recording adventure (for the “give in” CD). The “blackhole songs”, as they came to be known, needed a home somewhere and this was to be it. Most of the demos were done over 2 days. Remarkably, I believe Paul nailed the drum tracks within about 2 weeks. All the major tracks were done at Rich’s between June and August, with overdubs and vocals thereafter.
“Wake Up” – Essentially an inbetween-tracks recording, Rich & I threw this together one night during other demo recordings. After I wrote some words and piled on the acoustics, Paul graced us with 4 different drum tracks to choose from (take 4 is on the recording, I believe). For a song that took as long to write as it did to play, I really dig it…
“Kids” – Probably my favorite song on this one. It’s one of Rich’s from after “give in”, and is just a very different song in terms of what we’re all playing and how. The bridge is my favorite part in a PS song, hence the “two rooms and a palm tree” title.
“Falsetto” – A relatively new song for us when it was recorded. I think that helped us keep the energy in it. I recorded the solo at my house using the DOD Grunge distortion and sandwiching the cabinet between a mattress and box spring. Rich recorded these vocals, along with several others on the disc, in a day while quite ill. The squawks that creep up in the 2nd chorus are signature Birk accents…
“Flowers & Fond Remarks” – Don’t know if it’s evident in the lyrics, but this is probably the scariest song I’ve ever written. In the post-production stages, I played with some tracks to add the flanges inbetween the verses and pull up the delayed noises at the beginning. This is the only track that I used a different guitar (the old MX-N Strat copy) for the main electric – I wanted it to sound raw.
“On It” – Another of Rich’s, this version is not exactly what we’d been playing for a year or so before it was recorded. However, when I was doing my tracks & couldn’t get the intro to click, we decided to try it w/ the drum intro & it stuck. The little wind-down at the end is also new to this recording & just kind of showed up in listening to all the tracks that were there afterwards…
“Evermore” – An old guitar lick I’d had laying around on a 4-track tape somewhere. We heard it one day and decided to bring it back. Rich helped shape it into a song with choruses and the like. Probably our most Corgan-esque moment…
“Good Night” – Another of Rich’s, this one has what I feel to be our best vocal/music mix balance, staging. It’s the 2nd simplest song on the EP (next to Wake Up), but it just has a feel that carries you with it. The little melody riff came was the very first thing we came up w/ after Rich had the main progression. We originally used the verse riff all the way through but it felt better to have it work with and under the vocal track.
“Sunflowers” – A song I wrote in December 2003, we finally had worked it into the band repertoire. We tried to make the choruses very distinct, with the distorted minors and a PS-first tambourine track!
“It Meant What It Meant” – Another December 2003 song, this one had taken on a whole new life with the band playing it. Matt’s atmospheric slide parts enabled the dynamics to be felt. The end rave-up was something we’d started messing with a week or so before the recording began and revived the melodic theme from the original demo.
- b.w.