Welcome to Track-By-Track, our new series where artists break down the intriguing backstories behind their songs! For our inaugural Track-By-Track feature, we asked Dan Arnold (vocals, guitar) and Kyler Gillam (bass, vocals) of the influential post-hardcore outfit A Static Lullaby to break down all ten tracks from their fan-favorite 2003 debut record, ...And Don't Forget To Breathe.
While twenty-three years have elapsed since the initial release of ...And Don't Forget To Breathe, A Static Lullaby's first LP remains as relevant and vital as ever, due in large part to the group's early take on juxtaposing cathartic melodies with angular guitar riffs, venomous heaviness, and harsh vocals, which has since served as an important blueprint for the genre of post-hardcore at large for years to come.
Not to mention, this past May, A Static Lullaby celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary as a band with the special release of ...And Don't Forget To Breathe (Live), a live in-studio recording of the classic album, albeit this time with even sharper musicianship and clarity due to the years of professional touring experience accumulated since their original 2003 release, when the members were barely out of high school. The result is something modern and fresh, yet still nostalgic for anyone who has felt the impact of the songs that make up ...And Don't Forget To Breathe.
Plus, let's be honest: if A Static Lullaby's cult-classic single "Lip Gloss and Letdown" wasn't your Myspace song at some point, were you ever really emo?
In this exclusive feature with The Pretty Cult, Dan Arnold and Kyler Gillam break down the backstories behind all ten tracks from their landmark debut album, ...And Don't Forget To Breathe.
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1. Nightmares
Dan Arnold: All right, so “Nightmares” is a funny song because I always forget about it. It's the intro track, and it was more meant to be an intro, but it's an actual song. It's a really short song. It's probably the shortest song on the record if you go from the start of the actual instrumentation and not the full intro. But when we play it, it's so fun. It's such a good intro, especially live. It's a good vocal warm-up for me. It's a good register. It has some scream stuff, some singing stuff, some stylistic stuff, and it's not too much. So it's really nice to play. It gets heavy. It's a perfect representation of what the band was going for with that record. Listening back, we definitely chose the best intro song. It felt good to play that and revisit it live.
Kyler Gillam: And it's always a fun surprise when we start to play it.
2. Love to Hate, Hate to Me
Dan Arnold: “Love to Hate” was one of our first songs. I think maybe the second song we ever wrote. And I love playing that song. I love the structure of that song, or the lack of structure. There's definitely a chorus that repeats and a couple of repetitive parts, but there are so many sections, and it transitions from this thing to that thing. It's a lot of fun. The fact that I can still remember it all in my old age is really nice. It's muscle memory.
Kyler Gillam: Definitely a fun song to play. The chorus grooves. There's a lot of movement in that song. It's a lot of fun.
3. Withered
Dan Arnold: “Withered” is probably my favorite song on this record. Mainly because I was very impressed when we wrote it. I was like, “Oh, this is a real song. A real, real song. An actual song.” It's a good time. It's not too long. It has great verses, great dynamics, and when I say “a real song,” I mean more of a pop-sensibility type of song. It could have been a radio single if there wasn't so much screaming. But that's never what we were going for. We didn't care about radio play or anything. It's definitely one of the songs I'm most proud of on the record. I'm proud of all of them, but that one stands out because of that reason.
Kyler Gillam: Do you think it's one of the more cohesive songs on the record?
Dan Arnold: Yeah, it feels like we didn't write it. Like someone wrote it for us, but we did write it. I remember writing that song and it coming together in pieces. Obviously, the intro is two chords. You don't write that and think, “Oh, I got the song.” I think what I came up with first was the bridge because that was the cool part. Then the chorus happened, and the rest of it just flowed. It just kind of happened. It sounded like such a real song. It felt good to write something like that.
4. Lip Gloss and Letdown
Dan Arnold: “Lip Gloss” is a weird song for me because that and “Nightmares” were the last songs we wrote before going into the studio. “Lip Gloss” was unfinished when we got to the studio. We had the chorus, which is the meat and potatoes of the song, but the verses were not worked out. We worked out every song live when we played them, and the verses were never worked out live. It's not a weird song to sing, but it's a weird register for me. With the grit that I put on the vocals, it's always weird to find that place because it sounds cohesive with what I'm doing on the rest of the record, but it's a little different. It's always strange finding that headspace or vocal tone to get into the verses and stay consistent because we didn't practice that in a room. We wrote the verses in the studio, along with the beats and the way everything flowed. So I love that song. It turned out amazing. It was our very first single. Everyone loves it, and I have no complaints. But off that record, even though it's still a great song and one of our best songs, it's probably my least favorite.
Kyler Gillam: Really? Interesting.
Dan Arnold: The ending of it is a banger. The very end is so special. But the song as a whole, I have the least fun playing the front end until we get to the end. The ending is great, but the intro and everything leading up to it, I feel like I used to vibe with it a lot more than I do now. I don't know what it is.
Kyler Gillam: Interesting. That might be my favorite song to play live off that record.
5. Sip of Wine Chased With Cyanide
Dan Arnold: “Sip of Wine” has a special place in my heart. It's the very first song we ever wrote, and it kind of defined our sound. That was the sound. Strangely enough, I was originally going to do vocals on that song, or at least we were planning for me to. We had the musical shell of it for a couple of weeks before we started adding vocals. It was the first song we wrote musically, and it helped us capture the vibe. I think we had already written “Love to Hate,” and I was doing vocals on that one. We also had another vocalist at the time, so it was like, “Oh, I want to sing this one.” And I was like, “Okay, that makes sense. We'll split it up a bit more.” So he ended up doing the majority of it. Even though it was the first song we wrote, it wasn't the first song we finished. It definitely defined how the instrumentation was going to go and how we were going to capture the vibe. It unlocked a lot of doors for us. So I love that song.
Kyler Gillam: Nice.
6. We Go to Eleven
Dan Arnold: “We Go to Eleven” is right there with “Withered.” Not a radio song at all, completely different, but a special song. I love the Jimmy Eat World, Clarity-era bridge we do, where it's clean guitars and instrumentation playing off each other. It's such a fun, chill, interesting song. The stuff Joe does with the spoken-word, almost off-rhythm yelling and screaming before catching back up is great. The chorus is so good, and the timing of it is cool. It's like a 5/4 chorus, and then we randomly go into 4/4 at the end. That was all written at the house where we used to practice. We were making a lot of cool decisions, taking risks, and doing things we had never done before in our pop punk and hardcore bands in high school. That song unlocked another door for us. Also, the modulation in the second chorus was something we'd never done before. It all happened naturally. It was like, “Oh, what if we go here?” And then, “Oh yeah, that sounds cool.” The way we get back into the original key is awesome. That song surprises the hell out of me. I can't believe we were doing that when we were 19 years old.
Kyler Gillam: It's very prog. I also love when we all come in on the open D during the part where we come out of the heavy section. We all hit that open D together, and it feels so good every single time.
7. The Shooting Star That Destroyed Us
Dan Arnold: “The Shooting Star That Destroyed Us” was one of the middle songs we wrote. I feel like if that song were written today, we probably wouldn't write it. It would seem kind of cheesy to us because the intro is so poppy. It would have a certain silliness to it. But I'm glad we were in a different headspace because that song is another banger, and it really gets the job done. It definitely leans more on the poppy side, but it also gets really heavy. There are a lot of rad riffs in there. It's kind of on the same level as “Love to Hate” in that it takes you for a ride. There are so many different parts in that song. It's the longest song on the record. It's the most popular song from that record, and we never got to make a video for it. So I'm happy that we were able to do this live album and shoot some sort of studio video for it because we never got to do anything like that before.
Kyler Gillam: So just to follow up on that, when you guys wrote and recorded it, did you know it was going to be the song everyone connected with?
Dan Arnold: I think after we recorded it, yeah. We didn't know what a single was. We were in the weeds of, “We know we're good, and we know we're doing something good here, but we don't know what part is the good part. We just know it's good.” That's all we knew. Once we tracked it and put it on the record, and even before that when it was on the demo, people loved it right away. But after cleaning it up, isolating the guitars, and getting better tones, our management was freaking out about it. Everyone was loving it. So we knew then. I guess we knew from the demo too because people gravitated toward it immediately. There's a singalong quality to it that none of the other songs can quite match.
8. A Song for a Broken Heart
Dan Arnold: "A Song for a Broken Heart" is a song I really love. It was the third-to-last song we wrote for the record. I actually wrote it while I was stoned in Joe's enclosed glass sun porch at his old house. I was super high, and every idea, or the beginning of every idea, was written on this white Jasmine acoustic guitar, which I think was a Takamine subsidiary. We were all stoned. We were always stoned at Joe's. I think everyone else was inside, and I went outside to smoke a cigarette. I sat in the little glass house, opened the doors, and started playing to myself. I always had a guitar with me back then.
That's when I came up with the chorus rhythm. It won't really translate to text, but it's a cool rhythm. The way it switches chords isn't on the one beat. It's a little off, and it unlocked different grooves because of that. The song pretty much flowed exactly the way it came out. Being able to write in a room with a full band is such a special thing. It's also so easy. You come up with a part, and it's either shit or it's good, and everybody knows immediately. Transitions happen naturally, and things just flow. I took it to the guys, we practiced it the next day, and it all just happened. It was amazing. I love that song.
Kyler Gillam: It feels like one of the heavier songs on the record.
Dan Arnold: Does it? I don't know if it feels like one of the heavier songs. The bridge is definitely really heavy. It's darker, though. I think it's one of the darker songs on the record because of the key it's in. It doesn't really move into a lot of major-sounding moments like some of the other songs do. I feel like it's one of the darker songs. I don't know about heavier. Maybe. "The Shooting Star That Destroyed Us" has some of the heaviest breakdown parts on the record, but this feels more like a cohesively dark song.
Kyler Gillam: I think darker is probably the better word for it.
9. Annunciate While You Masticate
Dan Arnold: "Annunciate" is a song I love simply because it's upbeat. A lot of us in the band came from a pop punk background, and this song really vibed in that vein. It wasn't full-speed pop punk, but it was right there. It has a lot of energy. I actually remember writing the drum roll at the beginning. That's basically how I wrote the song. I think I came up with the rhythm riff first and then the drum intro. I had that idea and brought it to the band. We jammed on it for a day, and suddenly we had a song. It's awesome.
The bridge is so good, especially with the solo. There's a guitar solo underneath the vocals, and it's a cool guitar part that I wrote. Overall, it's a really good, fast, fun, energetic song. Definitely my third favorite on the record.
Kyler Gillam: That bridge is probably one of my favorite things to play on the entire record. I love coming out of that chorus and going straight into the bridge. It just feels so good.
10. Charred Fields of Snow
Dan Arnold: "Charred Fields of Snow." What a weird song. It's a super weird song. Maybe because it's in the same key, but it reminds me of a different version of "A Song for a Broken Heart." It's a completely different song, obviously, but it approaches that same dark sound from another angle.
I feel like it's one of the darker songs on the record. Obviously, "A Song for a Broken Heart" and "Nightmares" are probably the darkest, but this one has a lot of cool parts. When we were writing it, I had it in my head that it was similar but different. Since it was in the same key, I knew I was going to have to approach it differently and avoid my usual guitar tricks and triad patterns. I wanted to get more creative with the parts I was playing.
A lot of the guitar parts on that song are things I still really love. I like that it pushed me outside of my comfort zone. There are certain things I naturally lean on when writing, and this song forced me out of that box a little bit. The chorus is great. The disco-inspired beginning is great. It's a really weird song, but it's awesome.
Kyler Gillam: And it feels like a really good closing song for the record.
Dan Arnold: Yeah, and it was literally written on 9/11. I remember the day we wrote it. My ex-girlfriend came over to my house and woke me up. She was like, "Wake up. The world's ending," or something like that. I turned on the TV, and it was 9/11. Everything was happening. I was like, "Oh shit, what the hell?" My parents were at work. She came over, woke me up, and told me what was going on. I remember saying, "All right, I'll talk to you later. I have to go to practice."
We all met up and sat around watching everything unfold. I think both planes had already hit at that point. We were watching the news and hanging out before practice started. We all sat around on the couch taking it in. You could feel the energy in the room. Everyone was processing what they were seeing. It was obviously going to be a strange day.
Eventually, we said, "Let's write a new song today." I feel like we were all in the same headspace from sitting there together and watching the news. That's what that song is about. We wrote it the day it happened. We wrote it on 9/11, and it's about 9/11. Loosely about 9/11. We didn't know the full story yet, obviously, but it reflected what we were feeling that day and what we were seeing in real time.
Kyler Gillam: Yeah, but it's one of those things where you naturally associate it with 9/11. When you play it live today, do you still get those feelings?
Dan Arnold: Yeah. "Charred Fields of Snow" is specifically tied to 9/11 for me. I don't think about it every single time we play it, but it definitely pops into my head every once in a while. I don't think we've talked about it enough over the years. It's good lore for the fans to know. Maybe when we're about to play it live, we should give a little explanation because it really is tied to such an important historical day in America.
It's cool that we wrote that song and that it has maintained that connection to that day. Obviously, it was a horrible day, but I like that the song has that history behind it and that there's a very specific story attached to it.
...And Don't Forget To Breathe (Live) is available now via Smartpunk Records.
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