As Everything Unfolds recently released their debut album Within Each Lies The Other on March 26th and we asked guitarist Adam Kerr to tell us about each track. Check out their commentary on the album below.

On The Inside

The first track on an album always sets the tone for the entire album and we wanted to really capture our energy straight out of the gate. A track that stands on it’s own two feet; instead of becoming the increasingly pretentious intro filler track, that -in my opinion- doesn’t fit the 21st century listening experience (at least not as well as it did when albums were predominantly consumed in their entirety.) The main guitar part I'd had for a while, sitting mainly as a fun soundcheck riff. It was only when Jon and I sat down to incorporate the synths that it all fell into place and the chorus was born.

Take Me There

We’ve always been big lovers of atmosphere and with ‘Take Me There’ I really wanted to take the next level. Colossal drums over spacey guitars gave the track so much breathing space, and adding the synths to it gave a sense of movement to where it wanted to go. The song also features us downtuning the low A to a Ab/G# instead of moving the whole song up a half step to accommodate our usual 7 string tuning. I felt like the riffs and the chords benefited from this slightly lower grit, giving more edge on it, that the beauty of the cleans softened up.

Wallow

Wallow is the biggest juxtaposition we have on the album. After the opening technical riff I wanted the track to keep getting snarlier and snarlier, before opening into a really free chorus to let the track breathe. Originally the riffs went on for a lot longer but it felt like a little too much to digest in one sitting. Once Charlie laid down her voice, she fully delivered on the promises the riffs set up, going to town with her screams and paved the way to open the track even further.

Stranger In The Mirror

It’s funny how some songs are written over night and some take a long time in the oven. I’d written the chorus chords for Stranger 3 years prior to us finishing the track, and they’d always felt good but we could never figure out where they wanted to go. I remember Jon taking the original verse and completely turning it into a synth progression; almost overnight the song started to feel a lot more like an AEU song. And in true AEU fashion we opted for a much heavier second verse, more reminiscent of a breakdown/bridge than a verse but we love that sense of movement.

I’m Not The Only One

Every album features a song that just never sits right with you until the last moment. Even with the rest of the track fully sitting how I wanted it; I’m Not The Only One’s second verse laid a mystery for us for almost a year, never quite sounding like it should. The eureka moment finally happened once Charlie had finalised her lyrics, cementing that it needed to be a lot more dissonant to compliment the sensitive subject material. That moment also paved the way for more innovation, where Jamie’s triplet pattern on the next riff took the riffs musical stabs to the next level.

Grayscale

Whilst experimenting with different tunings like in ‘Take Me There’ I took E standard and dropped the low E to a Db/C#. After messing around for a bit I came across these really haunting chords, beautiful for the chorus but further building into the verse arpeggio I think they shined brightest. The ending of the song really shows off the dissonance of this tuning; previously it ended abruptly landing on the last note before the build up, but as soon as George heard it, he knew it needed to capitalise on the promise the last note made.

Stay

With Stay I really wanted to bring a sassy feeling riff that just had a lot of energy behind it. The album was shaping up with a more mature, serious sound, and whilst it felt good to move in that direction we also didn’t want to write ourselves into a corner. Charlie really nailed the sassy feeling throughout the entire track, even in the breakdown where that type of inflection tends to be too subtle for such aggressive vocals. Stay is probably the most cohesive piece to listen to when it comes to intertwining elements of both instrumentation and vocals.

Let Me Go

At this point of the album we really wanted to challenge ourselves to a more conceptual piece of music, something we hadn’t really touched on much before. A slower, more atmospheric feel to let the vocals shine a bit brighter complimented the base of the track but coming to the end we felt like it was building to something that wasn’t yet there. Jon and I sat down messing with some nasty sounding synths and came up with this unrelenting single note wall of noise, the chorus happened to sit perfectly over it too like it was meant to be.

Hiding From Myself

‘Hiding From Myself’ almost exists as a best of, for the AEU sound, fusing a little bit of everything together into a nostalgic feeling package. The verses took a while to sit right, as the staccato nature of them sometimes felt jarring instead of more playful. Not only that but building almost two breakdowns into this song felt so wrong yet so right, especially when we go back into the verse like nothing happened. It was definitely something that we weren’t sure about even right up until going into the studio.

One Last Time

Mixing clean arpeggios into big driven sections has always appealed to me, and in ‘One Last Time’ we tried to fit that into the modern rock track formula. Instrumentally, technical feats took a backbeat to allow a simple guitar melody to hold Charlie’s vocals on more of a pedestal. Her melody really served as the catalyst that allowed this song to become more than the sum of all it’s parts.

Wither

‘Wither’ is the song that means the most to me on this record. I’d written the song in its entirety before it became an AEU song, and had planned to keep it as just a personal one for myself, with my own (crudely) recorded vocals on top. Coming closer to heading to the studio; we found ourselves cutting a track because it just didn’t cut the mustard, luckily Charlie had heard the instrumental previously and had such a powerful idea for the song. I’m glad we ended up bringing it to the album, because it felt like such an injustice to keep it locked away. You can even find a nod to the original title ‘Find A Way’ in verse two.