Track By Tracks: Paper Forest - Trick Photographer (2022)

1.Lemontree:

This song is really cool. It's a simple chord progression with a really neat keyboard line on top. Trevor's lap steel sounds so amazing and Brian's drumming is just explosive. The break in the middle is my favorite part, compositionally -- I was really happy with the angular lead guitar on top of the brooding keys. That's also where we introduce the really subtle Rhodes part. The album version of this song has an extended ending that revolves around that Rhodes part and Joel playing trumpet. The second track on here is an old recording from around 2010. It's called "Animal Imagination" and has Will Bookout playing drums. The third track is a demo version of Lemontree with a different middle part.

2. House In Your Head:

This song took the longest to write. I found an old video of me playing the guitar parts so I wouldn't forget what they were, I guess I started writing what would become this song in 2017. I was struggling with lyrics, too. I was trying to explore anxiety and intrusive thoughts in a way that was genuine but still poetic. I went to Brian's studio to record the instrumental and it sounded great but something wasn't right. Once I finished writing the lyrics to that original instrumental version, I wrote a new intro part and wanted the whole song to be faster. I sent the new version back over to Brian (he engineered and mixed most of the record) and asked him to record new drums for the song. I promised him that the new version was better than the old one! Collaboration is mostly musical, but you also have to factor time and energy into the equation. Brian's recordings were so good that they inspired to me make the songs better, so I'm really grateful for him helping me find my vision for these tracks and helping me bring them to life. This song is the strongest example of that kind of collaboration that made this whole record possible.

The second track is called See With Words. This is a demo from 2015 that I rediscovered and thought would fit well with House In Your Head. The third track is an instrumental track called Dinnertime. Lots of delay and reverb on the acoustic guitars, heavy drumming from Brian, almost hip hop in feel. Kind of haunting. It sounds like a rainy night.