Track By Track: Condolences - Hope Is A Mistake (2015)

1. Hope Is A Mistake:

The first song on the EP, the title track, was actually the last song we wrote for it and we only played it together as a band one week before going in to record it. I had written the guitar line but thought it maybe wasn't right for this band. But just before we were due in to record the instruments, we decided we wanted another song and we started jamming that riff and a nice song came out. It is a bit different than anything else we have done. A bit post-rock, a bit poppy. Sean worked really hard on his vocals for this song and I think he did a great job. Lots of people we know who don't like our other songs dig this one, except the small part where I scream over the nice music haha. But, I really like this song and I like that it is a bit different and I enjoy how it is like a build up to the next song. This song, like every song on the E.P. is about my marriage breaking up. Each song is representative of a stage in how I dealt with it. This song is about the wallowing in misery and self-pity stage.

2. The Future Is Cancelled:

This is my personal favourite of the songs on the EP. It is much more of a straight up melodic hardcore song. I like the changes, I like the tempo and I just enjoy the song all the way through. Lyrically it is a very angry song and is reflective of the resentment that I felt at things at that particular time. Looking back at the lyrics of this song particularly, but all of the lyrics really, it does read like the ramblings of an angry, bitter man. A mental breakdown on record. This song and the next one were written at the same time and practiced together for a good while, with changes made to the structure of the song along the way. This is a pretty standard structure for us verse-chorus-verse-chorus. We are looking to record a video for this song. So please check that out when it is released.

3. Awake In A Nightmare:

Light/shade, soft/loud, quiet/heavy. That is what I like about this song, the contrasts. I think the vocal performances are strong in this one and I like Wilson's drumming. Musically this one has a post-hardcore feel in parts and I enjoy its aggression. Lyrically it follows the same topic as the rest of them and is more about emotions of disbelief and contemplating the idea of a disposable and expendable relationship. Incredibly emo-tastic lyrics. This is Wilson's favourite song I believe. It is the longest one of the EP.

4. A Dream Like Transit:

This song is weird. Really weird. The sound engineer who recorded it, Graeme Watt of Seagate Studios, Dundee described it as, "the unpigeonholable". There is a fucking spoken word section in it for fuck sake! It is an interesting song. It was the first to get radio play, so somebody liked that it doesn't make sense. It is about sleep-walking your way through all of the other emotions until you hit acceptance, feeling you have sorted yourself and moving on until you realise that your optimism is misplaced and your hope is ultimately a mistake. So the songs go full circle in that manner. I'm sure no one would get that from reading the lyrics independently, but that is how I wrote them.