Chinese Boxes

TREVOR: This song was not supposed to be on the record. It was written years ago during “A New Devotion”. Because the country rock vibe didn’t fit our sound at the time it was put on ice, but I always liked it. I gave it a fresh look and new lyrics just before we began recording the new album. It had no arrangement at all and we never rehearsed it. I just performed it with a click track and Max played along. We were already excited from that point, because the dry, mellow drums magically sounded like Mick Fleetwood!

From there we piled one thing on top of another, starting with some 12-string guitar. The song really got its sound when I added an extra guitar part with some phasing. Suddenly it lost some twang and took on a whole new 80s color. I was pretty excited when that happened and called Robbie immediately in triumph. Then I spent a drunken night recording about 12 different synth sounds. Robbie came in exhausted one night and played a bunch of volume swell guitar bits. He was half asleep. I cut them up and moved them around. He later played a bassline with just the right minimalist touch.

One thing leads to another in life until you wake up and find yourself somewhere you never expected to be. A mysterious chain of little decisions called ‘fate’. It’s a heavy thought when it arrives with a morning hangover.

ROBBIE: Obviously, this one has a very 80’s sound – like a Fleetwood Mac or Tom Petty record. Initially, it was sounding sorta country-ish but then Trevor added some great phased guitar arpeggios and keyboard parts that really changed the vibe. I played some volume swell guitar lines – some of which were turned backwards later. All these elements give the song a swirling quality which compliments the lyrics nicely, I think. For the bass, I tried to play something like John McVie would’ve played.

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