Wild Light Decade #03: The Undertow (Patreon)

The Undertow. You’ll know this one. Please enjoy this recording from December 2012 that captures the song in let’s say a… 65% (?) written state.

By this point, it seems like most of the programming has come together. The fluttery drums at least seem to be based on the same MIDI programming and samples that you can hear in the final version on Wild Light.

Check it out, here’s this demo version up top, vs. the final song as heard on the album below

So we must have locked down the tempo and super-weird, uncountable time signature relatively early. Furthermore, if you really take the time to A/B these two versions, although the piano sound is different, the piano performance itself is actually identical. This is because, despite the Chapel Studio (where we made the record for real) having a nice grand piano upon which Paul recorded who knows how many takes of this part, in the end it just didn’t sound as good as the manually-programmed MIDI we already had. So we just ran the MIDI through a better plug-in and used that instead. Eat that, music authenticity snobs!

[DULL 65 LIVE FACT: because the time signature of this song is so uniquely confusing in the breakdown, for the click track that Rob & Paul have in their ears when playing this live, rather than try to keep track of all the changes, the click’s time signature is just set to 1/4. So it’s kind of impossible to tell where the start of any bar is if they get lost. As long as they remember to not try to start counting, it tends to work out ok.]

So what’s still being written at this point in the Undertow-making process? It seems like it is mostly the guitar. The feedback noises at the beginning are clearly still searching for their final form, but what is more interesting is the breakdown that starts at around 3:05.

In the final version of the song, you can hear that it is only Si on the bass guitar that pins down the piano and anchors the build in tension. But in this demo version, you can hear that for a while there was also a guitar doing a counter melody that weaves itself around the space between the bass and the right hand piano melodies. It’s hinting at something really special with the short little ascends/descends that it pulls out from time to time.

The final version of Undertow has a kind of sound design that makes it feel like the song is coming from some other, abstract space. But somehow the guitar in this version really reveals the song as something that is being played by four people in a room. It provides a curious intimacy that feels subtly different to the finished track. Or maybe that's just our hazy memories of spending hours in our cold rehearsal room writing these parts...

In the end though — a lesson that took us about ten years to learn — pulling things out to create space for already-existing melodies/intent is usually better than squeezing another melody in there, no matter how good it is.

So, it seems like it was the concept of a ‘guitar-playing-the-role-of-guitar’ that really took a hit. At some later point, Joe picked up an ebow, applied it to his guitar, and his part evolved from the exploratory melodies you can hear here into the soft storm of a soundscape that envelops the final version of the track, and casts the stark piano melodies and drum flutters in a dimmer light.

The pivot from guitars being used less like guitars and more like sound design tools was crucial to this record and listening to this version of Undertow compared to the final version is a great example of us working it out. Aside from the aforementioned scrapping of melodies, the slight incline of dynamic you hear towards the end of this demo is nothing compared to the mountain of noise we made for the final version. Because if the guitar still needs to hold itself together articulately enough to make melodies, how are you supposed to make it erupt?

Here’s a picture of Joe playing a guitar back when we thought guitars were simply guitars. Joe: ‘This is our old rehearsal room. We got burgled here, and the roof fell to bits. Good times.’

That’s your lot, friends.

See you next week!