LINER NOTES

Automatic

This song has everything – everything from the ’80s, at least. It bridges the gap between outright disco and the synthesizer fantasias of the decade. From the bright and colorful worlds of 1983’s Return of the Jedi to the existential terrors of the Cold War; from the slick, glitteriness of the moonwalk to the ignoble convenience of the chicken McNugget; indeed, from the staid, imperturbability of Tom Brokaw’s debut to the promising black void of MS-DOS. This song is everything-eighties all swirled together in a funky morass of undeniable grooviness. It bops, it rocks, it claps, and it slaps. There’s no way to control – it’s totally automatic. Akie Bermiss

Anyone Who Had A Heart

This song, as many Burt Bacharach-penned jams do, really tickles our jazz school nerd-brains, and also touches our hearts (we do have them!). Who but Burt Bacharach could manage to tug at our heartstrings with such distinctive rhythmic phrases, surprising and cerebral chord changes, and a triumphantly unfolding song form? In our dream scenario, someday at a large table at a family restaurant in the Midwest, a hard-working New York woman who never took the time to find love will find herself sitting next to her sham boyfriend as he spontaneously breaks into a version of this song. The waiter in a lobster costume will come rushing to the piano to accompany him. The entire restaurant – strangers, family, the one who got away – will all erupt into a big joyful Bacharach sing-along and the ice around the woman’s heart will slowly start to melt, just like the pad of butter on the lobster in front of her. Bridget Kearney

You're Still The One

For years and years, as part of a wedding band, I played this song almost every weekend summer after summer. Eventually, I couldn’t help but start singing it myself. It’s a sumptuous song, a tale of unlikely lovers, with just enough ’90s schmaltz and unguarded earnestness to transport one back to the time of Jansport bookbags and VH1 Divas. And sneakers with lights in the soles and such. How could I resist?! Anyway, turns out I love to sing it – and the rest of the band is OK with that, I guess. Akie Bermiss

So Far Away

My mother would put on Tapestry on Saturday mornings while she was cleaning the house. Some Saturday mornings she blasted Rachmaninoff. But when she played Tapestry, my sisters and I arose with smiles on our faces and sang along with every word. “So Far Away” has always been one of my favorite songs. During lockdown, I sat down to learn how to play it on the guitar first thing. I played it every day for months and it brought me a lot of comfort. We hope our little spin on it can bring listeners some comfort as well when they are feeling far away from those they love. Rachael Price

Nick Of Time

On one of the first truly warm spring days of 2021, I got off the F train at Smith and 9th and began to walk to the Red Hook ferry that would take me to Governor’s Island for the day. Out of seemingly nowhere, I thought to myself “I need to listen to ‘Nick Of Time.’” I thought I knew the song. I’m a deep lover of Bonnie Raitt and this is one of her greats. But as soon as I got to the first verse, I realized I’d never internalized the lyrics. The groove of the song is so intoxicating that I think I’d always let the song wash over me but hadn’t taken that extra step to really listen to what she was singing about.

It ended too quickly so I listened to it on repeat for a half hour straight. By the time I had reached the ferry stop, I had tears in my eyes. A lyric that says so very much about what it’s like to be alive but is also about one very poignant thing is hard to do. Hearing it done right is a miracle.

That same day, upon returning home, I sat at the keyboard and taught myself the song, memorizing every word. I messaged the band and suggested we try covering it on our upcoming tour. I didn’t have any grand ideas on how to make it our own. Selfishly, I just wanted to feel what it was like to sing it and in a lot of ways sing it just like Bonnie. Because she sang it perfectly and it’s hard to beat perfection.

When we cover someone else’s song, we usually do our best to separate it from the original, to bring out a different side of it. But we just couldn’t seem to bring ourselves to mess with “Nick Of Time” *too* much. After playing it live a handful of times, we made a demo of it–the beat got slightly dancier, dare I say disco? It naturally moved into an end of the night at the club groove, and we liked that. But overall, it’s a pretty straight up rendition of a song that we all just love dearly and love to play. Hope you all love listening to it. Rachael Price

Linger

Our young romantic lives came online in the 90s right alongside the birth of the internet age and its epic heartbreak jams, so why wouldn’t we pick a veritable anthem of our adolescence to be on this record? We can smell the lacquered gym floors, taste the cheap punch, and close our eyes to see the strobe lights dance across painted cinder block walls while we try to dance new steps into the timeless pain of this oft-forgotten bop. Mike Calabrese

Dig A Pony

Here begins a very elaborate Halloween costume. It’s become a Halloween tradition for us to dress up as a band and perform a song of theirs. We have often said that playing covers is kind of like wearing a Halloween costume. At first inhabiting someone else’s words and melodies may feel a bit out of character, or even ridiculous, like playing dress up. But inhabiting the song helps it become a part of you. And then a few months later, you find yourself at the grocery store just wearing the pants from your ABBA costume

as everyday pants, ya know? Anyways, for Halloween 2022 we took it to the next level and dressed up as a band in a very specific circumstance. The Beatles famously performed songs from what would become their album “Let It Be” on the rooftop of their studio in London in 1969. We put on our best Beatles costumes, got on a Brooklyn rooftop and performed songs from “Let It Be” as our Halloween costume. McDuck couldn’t be there in person so we had a life-size cardboard cutout of him in a George Harrison costume printed out and he overdubbed his guitar parts. The first in the collection is “Dig A Pony,” an appropriately ridiculous song for such ridiculous circumstances! Bridget Kearney

Two Of Us

Relatable to any person with nostalgia for friendship, either current or one that has come and gone. Very meaningful for anyone who has been in a band with friends, especially in the case of the Beatles, who were recording this song towards the end of their tenure. Certainly what keeps any group together for so long is a feeling of friendship, because without mutual support so much of the lifestyle would be barely tolerable or navigable. And if you’re lucky enough to keep going and growing as a band, lyrics like “you and I have memories / longer than the road that stretches out ahead” carry with them the sentimentality of deep bonds as well as the cautious uncertainty of what the future holds. Because you cannot know, ultimately, what will happen, it’s important then to focus on what you can only know, which is where you’ve been. Perhaps if you always focus on your roots – what’s supportive and brings comfort in the midst of life – it doesn’t matter where you end up, because no matter what you’ll always be on your way home. Mike Calabrese

Don’t Let Me Down

The Beatles have been ever-present in our lives since childhood and sometimes their songs seem to be such a part of the very fabric of nature that you can forget they were written by real people with real stories and real emotion. This was the first song that humanized John Lennon for me. I realized the chorus was not just an anthemic sing-a-long but a real person’s cry into the universe. When you think of it that way, you really appreciate what John Lennon was feeling in that moment – that this new love was so precious and unique that he wanted to hold onto it forever. Bridget Kearney