The song descriptions that follow were procured over the phone Tuesday afternoon because playing at Madison Square Garden in New York City Wednesday night was weighing so heavily on the young minds of the three sisters in the Seattle band Smoosh that they were unable to calmly compose them in a word processing document and send them via the e-mail. That happens. The nerves don’t work well with the Internet system. It was a different mood when they were here in our company. They’d just finished a tour supporting their labelmates Aqueduct, playing in Champaign, Ill., the night before and were doing this one last this before heading home for a break. Seattle was calling them and the long drive – the exact same one that Aqueduct was about to do in one fell swoop – was looming. Smoosh was about to tackle it in a less cavalier way though, breaking it in half. Neither of the three sisters ever have to worry about driving the tour van, so it’s a full-on holiday when the gigs are finished. Their father, Mike, was the guy with the keys and the gas money and he knew enough that the girls needed something of a hanging carrot halfway through the drive to keep the spirits high. He’d booked a hotel room down the road and the great news was that there was a water park attached to the hotel and they were all giddy for it, understandably. There was going to be pizza and giggles and everything else. It wasn’t like they were getting ready to take the stage at Madison Square Garden. They were on the brink of fun, no strings attached. Here, they were smooth about their business and even graced our tape with a pair of new songs that will appear on their forthcoming record, to be released sometime next year. For that record, they’ll be three-strong, just as they were here. More Smoosh to love. – Sean Moeller

First song
Great Skies (Smoosh) [2.96MB] [2410 downloads]


— unreleased
It’s a new one. I kind of wrote it in two pieces. One day, I as playing around and I put them together and it worked. I finished writing it. The words aren’t totally finished yet though. I’m hoping the words will make more sense. On the next record, I want to write more meaningful lyrics. This was the first time that Maia’s ever recorded with us.

Second song
Promises (Smoosh) [4.53MB] [2295 downloads]


— unreleased
This is also a new one. I wrote a part of it a really long time ago and I thought I had a really good part, but I couldn’t finish it. I was being an inventor on that one. We didn’t have our sampler with us when we recorded with you guys. I like that this song is a really dynamic song. It’s got a pretty quiet part and a really loud part and we like that.

Third song
Find a Way (Smoosh) [2.83MB] [2108 downloads]


– original version appears on Free To Stay
I wrote this one partly in the studio because we needed more songs for the CD. We like playing this song. We have a lot of quiet songs and we usually tend to not play them live because nobody dances to them.

Fourth song
She's Right (Smoosh) [3.61MB] [2246 downloads]


– original version appears on Free To Stay
I wrote this one in less than an hour. I kept thinking about the different parts for it and I got pretty excited about it because it was right around the time when I wasn’t writing very much. The “she” is anyone. It’s not about one person. Also, this was the first one that Chloe started singing on.