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| Big Head Todd and the Monsters are set to return with New World Arisin' Photo credit: Jason Siegel |
New World Arisin’
Track By Track
“Glow”
“‘Turn the hurt into a song’ — that’s how a lot of creativity works, right? You have a hurt and you respond to it… ‘Glow’ and also ‘Mind’ are 20-year-old songs. They’re the stragglers that I always had on hand but that were a little too rock for anything that we were doing, whereas now they seem a perfect fit for this group of songs.”
“New World Arisin’”
“‘The old world will fight you till your dying day’: that’s how it is. I’m kind of a Charley Patton freak, and melodically, that song derives from an old gospel song that I heard Patton do. I turned it into a rock song and wrote different words for it. It sort of has a heavy metal/gospel feel: very traditional, musically, but it rocks pretty hard. And the lyric has what I would consider my dominant theme now, which is conflict — how people are trapped in it, and how conflict relates to intimacy and pleasure.”
“Damaged One”
“I’m interested in the pop song, and I think ‘Damaged One’ is a classic pop song. On the surface, it seems like just a tormented love song. But I think the theme is universal, because we can all relate to being damaged goods. Our identities come from our past hurts, and we cling to them, and we fight or we love. So it does transcend being a love song, for me. Especially those lines, ‘This judge ain’t sentimental/I can see life is a rental car/But I wanted a home’—feelings like that, I think, are universal.”
“Trip”
“That’s just super-fun and funky. It’s more about travel than anything else, to me — how travel lightens up the imagination.”
“Mind”
“Along with ‘Glow,’ this is the other song that’s about 20 years old and finally found its place. I did some rewriting of the lyrics as I dusted it off. The idea is: I want to give you my heart, but I give you my mind. Now, giving you my mind can mean being pissed. It’s that dichotomy again of: the head and heart in conflict. Using your head is a positive thing. The heart’s often wrong!”
“Detonator”
“‘Put your love in the clampdown’— I love the Clash. We’ve never done a song quite like that before.”
“Wipeout Turn”
“One of our favorites. ‘I was your lost child found/You were my wipeout turn.’ The idea is: I’m your hero and your rescuer, but you’re a disaster for me!”
“Long Coal Train”
“A straight blues song, not a heavy song. The funny thing is, it’s about my baby.”
“Under Your Wings”
“A straight rock breakup song.”
“Room Full of Mirrors”
“A Jimi Hendrix song; the Pretenders also covered it. That’s the later Hendrix from the Band of Gypsies era, and it’s that kind of very psychedelic/spiritual lyric: ‘I used to live in a room full of mirrors, all I could see was me/I took my spirit and I crashed those mirrors, and now the whole world is there for me to see.’ I love being able to take on such a great song.”
Visit the band's website at http://www.bigheadtodd.com/ for more info!
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