Exclusive – Maps and Atlases talk us through ‘Perch Patchwork’
By: Thomas Hannan
It’s fair to say we’re fans of Maps and Atlases – not only have they wowed us through the medium of Rockfeedback Television, been our recent Band of the Week and found themselves picked to star at a forthcoming Club Rockfeedback night, but we recently awarded their debut LP Perch Patchwork a full five stars in an unashamedly glowing review. Delighted we are then to be able to bring you this exclusive track by track run down of said record’s charms, as told by the band themselves.
will- The percussion sounds were fun to record for this song as Jason Cupp and I orbited the the cymbals on both sides with microphones. I was also really excited to stumble upon the melodic line at the end on the toy piano.
the charm- The core of this song started as much more of a straight forward, slightly comical and narrative-based country song. I am a big fan of Roy Orbison, especially his song "It's Over," and at some point The Charm began to take on more of that shape. The song is not based in a break-up experience, but is more meant to observe the rise and fall of human relationships.
living decorations- lyrically, this is the oldest song on the record but musically, one of the newest. I stumbled upon the basic chord progression one day and just kept playing it without ever really planning on it as a song for the record. Much of the final development of the song took place quickly in my parents' basement, messing around with toy piano and vocal/percussion loops.
solid ground- During our tour in the UK, we performed at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where a woman prying chestnuts open with a knife told us that we could eat them right off of the ground. Erin Elders and I went for a walk around the campus to investigate the chestnut situation and to explore the scenery when we saw a meadow with a single huge tree flocked with magpies. I came up with the initial melody and lyrics for Solid Ground in the hour or so that we spent under this tree while thinking about the lumpy contours of the field.
is- this is another guitar part that I just began playing one day, I can't really remember when, and it just stuck for some reason.
israeli caves- This is a song that had a balance between being intuitive and planned. The guitar parts were consciously meant to switch rhythms and experiment with new techniques, but that feel natural and are fun to play. The words have dense moments and literary references, but still feel simple to me. The song represents many of the different elements of our band working together.
banished be cavalier- The concept of this song originally arose from some evocative lines in bulk e-mails that the Maps and Atlases inbox was receiving and the desire to recontextualize those short phrases into a song. The rest of it was put together and finished during a short trip I took to Columbus Ohio
carrying the wet wood- I had been playing the guitar part for this song for some time and had also been trying to figure out a way to seamlessly transition between the verse time signature and the chorus (the chorus was the only part that I had words for) when Erin Elders said he had some lyrical ideas and they worked well. We began playing the song live and one of the final and most drastic changes on the record took places during the mixing when Jason and I completely deconstructed the song part by part and changed the layering of instruments and structure by starting with the harmonics and chorus drum part.
pigeon- I spent the years after graduating from college either on tour or walking significant distances around Chicago (I'm still spending them this way). On one such walk from Lincoln Park to Logan Square, I passed under a bridge that was completely overwhelmed by the strange energy of hundreds of pigeons. I recorded the lyrics, pretty much as they are, on a friend's voicemail immediately and then walked over to his house and recorded a more complete version.
if this is- This is another song that came together relatively fast in the initial and final stages. I'd been playing the end of the song for a while and liked the progression and it seemed like a good candidate to add to the balance and the flow of the record. We were nervous that the dramatic tempo change at the end might be difficult to pull off, but it actually work out quite easily.
was- I began working on this song in 2008 on a drive to Virginia and the melody stuck with me ever since. It's fun to play and the flowing quality works well as an intro the album.
perch patchwork- This is the most musically ambitious song that we ever set out to do and I'm proud that we were able to execute a lot of the ideas as well as we did. Part of the writing process for this song was intuitive and unexplainable, which was fun.
Watch Maps and Atlases performing at the 2009 SXSW Conference on Rockfeedback TV:
Artists in this article: Maps and Atlases