Funeral Chic release track by track guide for ‘Roman Candle’
FUNERAL CHIC have released a new track by track guide for their new album!
After undergoing a reincarnation with proto-punk influences coming to the fold, adding to their hardcore foundation, the band released their third full-length record, Roman Candle, last Friday. We caught up with guitarist Robert Stroud and vocalist Ryan Lockheart to get a full track by track breakdown for their new record!
Made In America
We were set to record Roman Candle the very next week, I believe, and we wrote this in one take at our last rehearsal. Made In America started out as just a note I’d written and an idea I’d stolen from another song I wish I’d written. I gave the boys a simple direction that probably took a solid 30 minutes to explain, given that I’m the dumbest man alive. We played through it one time, put a pin in it, and brought it with us. The pedal steel riff was the only thing we “wrote” in the studio. We probably owe someone something for this, we’ll let ‘em know when the money comes in.
Spit and Crawl
This was the second song I wrote for the record, but at that point we still had no idea how the thing would sound, so I was really just reaching out for anything. That said, my comfort zone is ripping off PIG CHAMPION riffs and then seeing how everyone else in the band interprets it. That’s how our writing process works, really: I’ll draw from some influence that the other guys aren’t really familiar with and then watch them put their own influences into it. Doesn’t always work, but this time it fucking did.
Roman Candle
Some songs are just accidents that arise from fucking around, and other ones are deliberate from their conception. Roman Candle is one of the latter. I had this pattern stuck in my head for like a year and I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be, so I demoed it as a guitar riff just to save it for later and ended up loving the way it sounded. Everything else was born out of a desire to have a song be both machine-like and pounding but also have these sort of loose and psychedelic ornaments on it. No idea what the lyrics are about. Probably crack.
Satisfaction
There’s a thing that happens around the 3:50 second mark of Satisfaction that will probably be my favorite thing we’ve ever recorded. We weren’t sure it was going to work, even after all of our parts were laid down and we stacked the synths a mile high. But we are the luckiest band in the world. Our engineer Kris had a friend who played saxophone, and we invited him over to see what he could do with it. He listened once and laid it down perfectly. Hearing the crescendo and watching him play it in real time was a religious experience for me. Shout out to Walter. What a fucking pro.
Ain’t Goin Nowhere
Despite the fact that this is one of the simpler songs on the record, this one took the longest for me to crack. That’s the trouble with simple songs. You can smother it or neglect it. Sometimes all it needs is a chip on its shoulder, a LED ZEPPELIN reference and a sweeping declaration.
Lose
This song is another bastardization of POISON Idea riffs. The end result is way different than what I intended, but I like that about it. This is also some of my favorite drumming Alex has ever done on a record. If you really like this song, watch him play it live sometime. He goes completely overboard and drowns the rest of us out.
Built To Love
First song written and demoed for this album and probably still my favorite for that reason alone, if nothing else. When I listen back to it, I hear a lot of soul music affectations, which is cool because I had none of that in mind when I wrote it. Happy accidents. That over-indulgent guitar solo was not an accident though, I put my whole dick into that and tried to sound like Gary Moore in his THIN LIZZY era. But, ya know, if he like never practiced.
Born To Kill
I hate this fucking song. There’s nothing really wrong with it, I just hate it. The last time I listened to it was when we got the masters back. And this isn’t like someone else’s song and I’m just playing it begrudgingly: I wrote this fucking thing. I own it. It’s my piece of shit deadbeat son. Actually the end kind of rips.
Last Line Blues
Slow songs are tricky for aggressive bands. It’s easy to overstay your welcome. I knew I wanted to try something unashamedly bluesy for one of our records at some point, so I’m glad we finally got to make it work. I was really fucking excited about this song since I heard Rob‘s pre-production demo, but again this one was elevated beyond my wildest expectations by Walter‘s bitchin saxophone track.
Two Headed Dog
I think this is the first cover we’ve ever released. We’ve only dabbled with a few cover songs over the years, but this was the first one where the vote was unanimous. Politics. Out of all the songs on the record, this was obviously the most nerve racking one. Being concerned that a song might not work is something I’m familiar with, but the anxiety with this one was a whole new territory for me. Because, truthfully, I didn’t even know if I was capable of delivering. If I couldn’t hit the notes, I was not going to phone it in and just bullshit my way through a metal guy vocal track. Confidence is just an invitation for the universe to knock you down a peg so I’ll just chalk it up to luck.
Roman Candle is out now via Prosthetic Records.
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