Track By Tracks: Tumbleweed Dealer - Dark Green (2024)
About the album as a whole (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
We tried to capture two essential parts in Alan Moore’s retelling of Swamp Thing’s origin: Firstly, the main character’s struggle and loss of identity. We also wanted to capture the antagonist’s transformation into nature’s anger towards men. We wanted to keep all the Southern sensibilities in our sound while tackling a much more serious tone.
Track by Track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
1. A Distant Figure In The Fog:
We wanted to capture the ominous feeling of knowing that something is out there at the beginning of a movie, but you don’t know just what. Musically, it’s the first track I wrote after getting a mellotron-emulating guitar pedal, and I wanted to make full use of the choir settings to dial into that Fulci zombie movie soundtrack vibe.
2. Sparks Adrift In The Louisiana Nightsky:
This song evokes the clamor of angry locals running into the marsh, torch in hand, to capture Swamp Thing. The feeling of mass hatred that is born out of incomprehension and fear inspired this track to be more complex than anything Tumbleweed Dealer has done in the past.
3. A Plant That Thinks It’s Human:
We tried to capture the old-school sci-fi vibe around the idea of someone learning that they are simply memories embedded in a new complex organism—in this case, a plant. We did that by incorporating elements of a post-punk atmosphere with ’80s inspired synths so we could later contrast it with smoother progressive rock sections.
4. Becoming One With The Bayou:
Our protagonist lays down and gives up. The rain fills up his wooden eye socket and he cannot be bothered to blink. We tried to capture the grief of this moment with a mellotron-heavy track that constantly contrasts nostalgic slower moments with angular upbeat ones.
5. Dragged Across The Wetlands:
Swamp Thing is back! And he is pissed… Imagine having a mythical, gigantic Ent-type creature grab you by the legs and run through the swamps. Upbeat and catchy, the song’s darker melodies underlie the anger that drives it.
6. Dark Green:
The title track is meant to sum up the whole voyage. The song pauses midway and picks back up through a whirlwind of rapid tonal shifts that are meant to bewilder and confuse during a first listen but to be rewarding on subsequent plays. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like rewatching The Usual Suspects for that plot twist, which none of our fifteen-year-old selves saw coming. It’s our Keyzer Söze.
7. Ghosts Dressed In Weeds:
We brought in Ceschi Ramos for his unique ability to blend rap, singing and screaming. We played with the fact that, after 3 and a half instrumental albums, hearing his voice might set up the expectation that we were heading for a classic verse-chorus structured song. Of course, the aim was to shatter those expectations as soon as they set in.
8. Moss On The Mind:
The final 3 songs lead into each other in an attempt to close off the album with an epic trilogy. Every progressive rock album needs one of those sequences! On the opening track, we created two similar chord progressions, one being major and upbeat, and the other being its minor key, sadder counterpart. We wanted to have a duality that was similar to the anime theme and ending songs. The fun was in alternating between the two moods.
9. Body Of The Bog:
This song is the “body” of the closing trilogy, hence the name. It served as a kind of depository in which we could add all the twists and turns we wanted to include on the album. What resulted is a long, charged, and dense (we swear that’s not a euphemism) song that navigates through various changes. Just when you think it has completely derailed from its original starting point, the nods to the opening sequences start showing up and the track begins to take us full circle.
10. A Soul Made Of Sludge:
A song carried by its rhythm section’s constant drive and the lush keys that hover above it, the few guitars included in the conclusion to the album are actually re-purposed melodies from the opening track. In some sense, the end of the album brings us to that slightly doubtful feeling that something is, somehow, familiar: “Isn’t this where we came in?”. We tried to showcase how stylistically far from the intro we have come, while remaining part of the overall Tumbleweed Dealer sound. What entertains our curiosity now is how much further we can push to broaden that sound.
Album pre-order - https://tumbleweeddealer420.bandcamp.com/album/dark-green
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