Cardboard Cars
Tom: This song was written with my good friend of mine and ex-Wheels drummer, GW. The song was inspired by the construction of two stage prop cardboard cars for my daughter's school production. It began on acoustic guitar and as per GW's instructions, I tried to keep it simple. The song reminds me of a “Ha the Unclear” another NZ group. It has a really strong kiwi accent in it.
Interestingly this was the last song that we recorded for the album. There's a running joke in the band when we have enough songs in production. Someone says “Don't write any more songs”. And of course that's a red flag to a bull! This immediately causes the other person to write a song. The old reverse psychology trick I guess.
Another influence on the song was the Spoon song “the underdog”. Also the Lambchop track “Up with people”. Both of the songs have great horned sections. I really wanted to write two complementary horn parts. The horn parts that come in are counterpoint to the vocals. Of course we don't have any horns in our band or anyone who can play horns so we've used MIDI to compose the horn sections.
Andy: those MIDI sounds give it a different sort of feel which is it’s own aesthetic and kind of matches the subject matter. There's extra reverb and a bit of light distortion added to mellow some of the synthetic cleanness of the sound. Arch added this bendy guitar line that bounces from ear to ear in the second verse - a part I always look forward to.
Arch: there’s this really crisp dryness to the guitars, it’s a classic strum and propels the song along really nicely. I wanted the guitar accompaniment to be more elastic by contrast, almost in the style of a string arrangement. These lines are like the bedsprings the rest of the song is jumping on.
Lyrically the song focuses on commuting to work and the banality of modern working life. Of course because this is the Cosmic Wheels there is an animation to go with the song. We were hoping to release this animation before Christmas 2018. However time caught up with us and although we got the song finished, the filming was abandoned (like all great art) after a test shoot.
