I sat down with Gerard and we brainstormed, and the children being stolen started coming in as a motif, so we started stealing some of the aesthetics from 'The City of Lost Children' — sort of that surreal atmosphere. The Watchers and the resistance, that was always in my head, but it got more refined. Gerard was helping me get the details down so it would feel right. It came together after that. We just started honing it until it felt like it was all working. |
I'm hoping to play some of the songs that we didn't get to play on the headline tour we just did. I think we really want to play all the songs on the new record. It's hard to choose between them, but I think we'll pick a couple that we haven't played live so far. |
In the end, we realized we had to go with our gut, |
It feels like there was a really, in some ways, kind of fashiony, contrived feeling that surrounds that scene. We always kind of were going around saying we're writing the music we wanted to be writing and somehow found ourselves in the middle of that. There were very few bands that were labeled that way that we really respected musically or were good friends with. |
Overall, I think 'Red Sky' is dealing with the issues that [people] suffer, but in the end things are redeemed and there's a resolution. It's got this image of a storm that comes and in the end this unexplained supernatural change [happens] and everything kind of comes right through these dark times. It's about hope in general. |
This next song, hopefully, will act as a reminder for you guys, |
We don't know what we are going to do with this. It's really random with all the ways that we're thinking. Some are very literal and some are very non-literal, but we have no idea where we're going right now. |
We so wanted to step out to something different that we made it clear to each other there were no boundaries for that. We were really just writing very uninhibitedly, but also not at all paying any attention to any context of who we were as a band, which I think was really good. |
We were uncomfortable with it from the beginning because we felt like we were, I guess our heart was in a different place than all of those other bands that we were being labeled that, |
We've done a couple dates with them in the past, and we've always been big fans. We [wanted] to do something a little different for the show. I was just thinking he'd do some harmonies and stuff, and he was like, 'I've got some stuff I wanna sing.' So he kind of went off and sang some melodies that he had made up, and they were really cool. |
Writing this record was the first time we felt really at home in a long time, |