Mystery

LYRICS

The lyrics came about during a romance of mine (one that has been very successful and has led to marriage) and was kindled by all of the turbulent and interesting things that a relationship makes you think of. Some of the words seemed to hinge on a relationship based around two people not knowing each other as well as they thought they did, and the conflict and resolution that came from that.

In terms of imagery I always thought of hospitals and doctors, which then led onto thinking about ‘Scrubs’ which in turn made the whole song seem less serious.

DEVELOPMENT

The development of the song definitely came before the lyrics for Mystery. It was at this point blackboypeaches was just forming and Tom and I were starting to knock ideas and songs around. I remember clearly being at my parent’s house and unearthing an old, beat-up behringer guitar I had borrowed off my friend and then forgotten about. I plugged it into my little 10watt Marshall practice amp I bought when I was 15 and starting mucking around. For some reason the riff we use for Mystery was all I played for the next two hours. I thought it was kind of cool but a little bit jazzy so I never really thought it would work.

Just for fun we kind of jammed it out at band practice and I remember Jackson Rodeka (our drummer at the time) being really baffled about how to play it. In the end Tom suggested just slamming it with a straight kick pattern and it started working.

The funny thing was that we had started recording the ‘Slasher EP’ already and Mystery was recorded on a whim. Tom and I after that spent the hours in front of the computer discussing the arrangement and figuring out instrumentation. In the end it worked but it is never an ideal way to create a song.
Get a band – Haha, I should listen to my own advice.

The way I produced the vocals for the song was trying to be quite raw and in your face. I’m not sure if I succeeded in this but I remember being pleased with the first few lines of the song (still not being much of a vocalist at this point) and how they kind of just stomped their way out

INFLUENCE

There was a band that had a one-hit-wonder called ‘California’ which was the theme song for the OC, I think the band was called Razorlight. Anyway I loved the name of the band and the way the words intonated sharpness and brilliance, hence the use of the word in the chorus.

The other band that was fully dominating my interest at the time was FamilyForce5, who are an epic ‘crunk-rock’ band that function on both the dance scene and the contemporary metal scene. They had a song called ‘Lose Yourself’ which although wasn’t their greatest song just seemed to hit a note with me. One of the lines in this song was ‘in your own world’ which seemed both funny (in my sense of humour) and deceptively perceptive about people. The line also seemed to fit with my themes and so thank you FF5.

The last contributing factor was from a book I read by Terry Pratchet called ‘Going Postal’. A hugely clever and talented writer. A small part in the book was about a ‘Golem’ which was a creature made from Everlasting Clay with the Eternal Fire put inside, so they could never die. The one that featured in this book tells the main character at one point that he spent 900 years stuck under a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea, lost in the deepness, where the most interesting thing that happened the whole time was the appearance of an anchor. The words and images that ‘lost in the deepness’ stirred in me were pretty awesome, so I used them for the chorus.

Check out the lyrics to this song if you like.