The band's forthcoming new album '5-3-8' will be available in 2022 through Earth Libraries, it was written and recorded during the Pandemic, at Sonic Ranch near El Paso, TX, working alongside engineer/producers Sonny DiPerri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective) and frequent collaborator, Tony Brant.
Speaking about the song, they explain: Lyrically this song started off with a few vague images, as do many lyrics I come up with, and I sort of pieced them together. The whole band ultimately helped edit.
Originally, I pictured a sort of a sprawling, dystopian city—a kind of rusty city hell.
In it, I imagined two main characters, possibly a couple (or friends), looking down from a rooftop into smog and the industrial rat race. They are bolstering one-another, speaking as if they are separate from it, when in reality they are destined to be a part of it—Destined to repeat patterns + identify with them.
The characters find comfort in each other, not in the world, it would seem. But they are of the world. They are worldly.
I was reading Dante’s Inferno a lot. Dante’s rings of the underworld + different circles of hell was something I was thinking about. Circle imagery is sprinkled liberally throughout the song. I kind of thought of circles and how it relates to the Ouroboros. The lyrics “ You watch impalas move donuts round the lot. They all move backwards. They all move back.” Is my wink and nod to Circle 8, Bolgia 4 from Dante.
The charters in the song talk in circles, and keep cycling through a wide spectrum of talking points. They do this until they land on something they both intrinsically agree on, forgetting the lot of their disagreements——Feelings of understanding overshadowing anything else. That can be distorting. I imagined the two characters in the song on some kind of amphetamine.
I kept thinking about Politicians like Trump, who are constantly speaking on every side of an issue, as a manipulation tactic, so his base will eventually zone in on what they wanted to hear from the beginning. He will affirm and denounce the same subject in one ramble. I think about how often I’ve known people who work like this.
Watch/listen below.
(facebook)
Tags: Dendrons
