Heyo, this is Myles, ¼ of The Neverends. I’m gonna be doing a track by track review of our new album ‘Party Boi’, which is gonna be available on all music streaming platforms on February 8th.
1. Party Boi
We (Stephen Pale, Gerassimos ‘Jeremy’ Giannoulis, Tyler Jon Becker and I) wanted a sort of ‘listening to a shitty band in a dive bar’ type vibe for the intro to this song. That’s actually our voices laughing in the background talking about some nonsense–beef stroganoff, Tom Brady, good poops. Our producer, the magic man Jordan Meltzer, sampled us doing a bunch of random things in his basement studio, like playing pool, ping pong, opening and closing our guitar cases, which was really cool; I don’t think there is a single abstract sound on this record that we stole from YouTube or anything…it’s all just us making them from what I remember–and there are a lot of hidden sounds/surprises layered in all the tracks of this album if you listen carefully.
We wanted a wall of sound to attack the listener when all the other instruments come in after the intro–which I think we achieved pretty successfully. All the tracks were recorded live, besides vocals, additional guitar layers, and weird ass noises which were added in post to give it a fuller sound. The ‘dreamy’ section of the song, about two minutes in, is actually my favorite part. It’s inspired by a band named ROAR who do a lot of these kinds of breakdowns(?), for lack of a better term, in their songs. We try not to do the traditional verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus thing for some of our songs to give more of a surprise to where it’s gonna go and I think that shows pretty well in the last minute of the track.
The vocal booth was actually just our producer’s coat closet, so I was in there for like a half hour each day we had in the studio screaming the vocals hoping to god that his mom didn’t come home and think he was murdering someone, not that he’s the type of person that would–he’s a fucking angel-wizard-mastermind, love you Jordan. We tried a couple of times to get the right sounding feedback to end the song, but I think we actually just ended it with the first live take of my guitar doing those sweet sweet feedback noises.
2. d3ppR3$$1Øn
This was a fun one. Probably the funnest that we recorded in my personal experience. We had several takes of me just fucking around with my guitar and effects to get some weird background noises to make it sound real chaotic. Jordan put this cool delay effect on my voice so that during the instrumental sections whatever I said last was backmasked and repeated. The first time we listened back to it, we isolated the vocals and thought that the backmasked version sounded like I was saying ‘John BoyeGA!’. Shout out to John Boyega—incredible actor.
Most of my lyrics don’t really have meaning to them–they mean whatever you want them to/however you interpret them, but Jordan started analyzing them while we were listening back to them and thought the lyrics to this song was satire on people complaining on social media about how much their lives suck and shit like that, which I thought was cool because I never really thought of it that way. But yeah, if you’re depressed go and fucking seek help. I hate the stigma around shit like that–if you need help go get it; fuck what other people think. You do what’s best for you.
3. I’ll Shut Up
Ironically, I write a lot of my ‘breakup’ songs when I’m in a happy relationship. I’m just weird like that. I usually come up with the base of the song, bring it to the rest of the guys and end up collaborating/working on it together. With this, I really wanted a feel that you just walked into a disco club from the year three thousand 1979 as a new band started their set.
[Stephen] Pale did a hell of a lot of layers for this track. He actually went to school for music and would just think of shit on the spot to add another layer to whatever song. The third out of fifth day in the studio was basically all Pale just adding a shit ton of cool, dreamy layers to a bunch of the tracks. I guess this is our most ‘poppy’ song, but it’s in a ⅞ time signature for some measures sprinkled throughout. We didn’t really try to write a song in ⅞–it sort of just happened and sounded good.
Funny enough, this probably had the most live takes due to random ⅞ measures and me not singing the vocals so that the mics wouldn’t pick it up in the background. We’d all not be insync for a ⅞ measure, yell “FUCK!”, and try another take immediately. I love Tyler’s drum part to this song, I think it’s our producer’s favorite drum part as well. It gives it that extremely danceable groove which is fun to see the audience react to when we play it live.
4. Put A Coat On
Senior year of high school, my friends and I would skip assemblies and go to Dunkin Donuts or something. I had this huge crush on someone from my friend group who I ended up dating for about 2 years and she’d always sit in the back while I drove, which is what inspired the beginning lyrics. We actually did a music video to this song over the summer which should come out in a month or two, so look out for that on our YouTube channel!
This is probably my favorite song to perform live because I just sing for it and don’t have to worry about fucking up my guitar part. This seems to be a fan favorite and it’s pretty surreal to hear the lyrics sung back at me. I also love screaming “darling!” in the last chorus. Jeremy’s melodic bassline is literal music to my ears, and I love just jamming out to it whenever we play live. Fuck it, Jeremy’s basslines are usually my favorite part of every song we do. Thank you Jeremy for being a melodic beast.
The reason this is called ‘Put A Coat On’ comes from a story one of my best friends told me: He and his girlfriend came upstairs from his basement and saw his mom or something and his mom asked him if he put a raincoat on–which is code for condom. I thought ‘Put A Coat On’ was a catchy, yet subtle way to describe this vulgar song.
5. Split My Head
This song usually kills my voice live because of all the screaming. When we recorded this, I wanted a real FIDLAR type vibe with all the backwards sounds and delays. I remember hearing Sober by FIDLAR and going, “damn, I wanna write something like that. The chord progression, mainly the verses, was heavily inspired by Keep Me in Mind by Little Joy. This is also a heavy Pale layered song–we wanted this shit to be an army of guitars in the chorus battering your front door down.
The lyrics, ‘I don’t wanna go through this again’ in the bridge refer to my reluctance to enter a new relationship. Love is amazing, but heartbreak is the fucking worst. For some reason, I always think of the South Park episode where Butters gets broken up with, is seen crying in the rain by Stan, but explains the bittersweetness of going through a breakup; how it sucks, but he’s glad that he’s feeling something human.
6. Queue Laughter
I was a dumbass and thought ‘queue’ was pronounced ‘qwe-way’ for the longest time, so i’d always say put the song/video on the qway-way! I guess the title refers to how I feel/reflect about all the sad/depressing parts of my life–how I just want someone to queue laughter or some type of happiness when I’m feeling horrible.
A lot of these songs are inspired by my experiences/trials and tribulations from summer of senior year of high school to now (I’m currently a senior in college). Jordan actually made a funny point about how this album actually could be a concept album/musical if you really dissect it, which I never thought about until he brought it up. His idea was that it is basically from the point of view of several people/characters before/during/and after a college party. Again, my lyrics are what you take of it.
This is another example of how we try to stray from the traditional composition of a song–it has 4 completely different sections/vibes. The ‘I don’t want to go through this again’ also makes a comeback in this song. A lot of bands callback to lyrics they have in different songs and I just remember being inspired and wanting to do that with one (technically two?) of our songs.
We wanted the end to sound like you’re about to march off to war knowing you’re gonna die, but you’re going to give it your all–which is why we sprinkled all those crazy effects underneath the power chords to make it even more chaotic and like the room is spinning.
7. Take A Coat Off
I’m going to sound like such a hypocrite right now, but these lyrics actually mean a lot to me. The melody and lyrics to the first verse came to me in an uber ride home from my girlfriend at the time’s house after a bad fight, and I left knowing that it was going to be over. I still have the original lyrics saved in my notes app on my phone that has the exact date/time of the moment I figured them out in the uber ride. For whatever reason the song Hard Luck Woman by KISS was stuck in my head, but I figured a similar chord progression for the verses would sound cool played slower and with a different type of bluesy vibe.
I was a huge KISS fan in middle school, and I loved the sound of Peter Criss’s raspy voice, which I tried to capture in the latter half of the song when I scream the lyrics. I really wanted this song to build so that it would just explode in the end–kind of like Six Flags’s Kingda Ka; go from zero to a hundred but not as fast.
We rehearsed this before one of our shows and Pale started improvising this jazz/blues type of guitar outro and we all kind of agreed that we loved the idea of it sounding like an explosion going off at the end and a beautiful, soft guitar solo coming out of it. This is so bad, but I think our goal for this song was to make people cry, and it has made 6 of my close friends cry already, so I guess we were successful?
8. V for Victory
This was another fun one to record. Especially since my live take with the band just consisted of me fucking around with my guitar again since I don’t usually play it with this number. We wanted this track to sound as chaotic and dirty as possible, which is why there are so many vocal layers/weird sounds for some phrases.
We specifically put this after Take A Coat Off for that sharp contrast vibe for the album. We hope there is a song for everyone to enjoy on ‘Party Boi’, no matter what kind of music you’re into. The beginning noise is just me fucking around with an octave knob on my Line 6 amphead.
Line 6 gets a lot of shit, but I’ve been using it since I first started playing guitar. I guess it’s because of the meme that people try to use the ‘insane’ preset for metal or ‘harder’ genres, but I just like that it comes with all the effects so I don’t have to drop $1000 on pedals alone. Fuck it, it’s worked for me so far.
9. Fed Up
This is an inside joke, but the full title, at least to me and the rest of the band members, is actually Fed Up (In Madagascar) because Pixar’s Madagascar was playing on the TV while we were trying to come up with a title (Jeremy’s idea).
This is actually our most recent song that we have written, and just so happens to be the last track on the album. We were debating on adding beach/wave sounds to the end when it is just the two guitars, but decided against it because we all thought it would be a bit too corny. Pale also had an idea that we start the next record with the same two chords as a kind of continuation/nod to this album. Will we do it? Who knows! Keep up with us to find out.
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Photo Caption Left to Right: Gerassimos “Jeremy” Giannoulis, Tyler Jon Becker, Myles Fabrizio Yambao and Stephen Pale
