The Real You is our debut album under the Zippah label, and it marks our first collaboration with producer Brian Charles (of Sheila Divine and Nina Gordan fame). We made a modern record, blending our brand of rock with some dance elements, but we recorded it in an old school way by recording the effects and performance straight to audio. Here's a track-by-track description of what each song is about:
1. "Gone, Gone, Gone" - A song about a pathological search for what’s new or next and the obsessive need to fulfill the promise we made to ourselves when we were young to never stop searching for something better.
2. "Call It Karma" - The relationship is over and yet the punishment continues. Coming to terms with being the guilty party and all that it entails, including acceptance that even in the worst situation, the guilt lifts and life moves forward.
3. "The Real You" – It’s about letting go of emotional baggage to find your true, authentic self.
4. “Ladders" - Your classic ‘Let’s Get It On’ mixed with ‘But Wait, Can We Get It On’.
5. “Heartbeat" - Laying awake next to the person you’re supposed to love and weighing the comfortable life that you’ve built with a good person that you don’t love against the heartbreaking reality of telling them the truth.
6. "Everest" - A song we truly wrote as a band from a smaller GarageBand ditty.
7. “Innocence" – We approached this stylistically like a 21st century Plastic Ono Band. It was a lot of fun blending vintage, Beatles-inspired sounds with some modern sounds.
8. “Spark" – It’s about a one-way relationship.
9. "Thinking Cup" - This was inspired by Joey’s fear that his young nieces would grow up in a world where they were they were smart. anxious and had no answers. His knowingly idiotic wish for them is to just give up.
10. "Perfect Soul" - Joey sent a demo comprised of loops he put together with GarageBand. We took that and turned it into this art rock, Bowie meets Radiohead sort of piece. There are some synths and samples in there, but the majority of the sounds were made organically in the studio from twisting a bunch of knobs or driving the meters into the red.
11. "A Ghost" - Lyrically, this song is about watching someone you love, once again, lose themselves to addiction and realizing that, after all this time, you’re the one giving up on them, though, you never thought you would.