We impatiently await a number of sessions – just lately, Andrew Bird, Okkervil River and Deerhunter. We were excited to meet up with our friend Red Hunter from Peter & the Wolf last week. We would have Owen Ashworth back for a hang every available opportunity. Our buddies Dr. Dog are here with us again today and we couldn’t be happier, but Maritime is a band made up of four dudes whom we’ve really grown attached too. There was a real chipper feeling in the air the morning of the session – again on a Sunday afternoon, a special day trip in from Milwaukee the second week in August. Justin Klug had grown a full and manly beard since they’d been here last. Dan Hinz had gotten married. Dan Didier had moved out of the new father phase – his cute as a button daughter had just been born a week or two prior to the first session visit – and was now getting her to rock out to The Narrator’s new record in the back of the car during a drive. Davey von Bohlen had welcomed a second son into his life, one spent tending to many of the daily parenting duties when the band is home. He wakes up some mornings to his one son calling him a rapscallion or scallywag or other pirate-y modifiers and also since the first visit, they’ve all had over a year to become an even more important band. The last time they joined us here in the Quad-Cities, we capped off the visit with Mexican food and Coronas. There was no time for dinner this time, but we made sure that the fridge was stocked with Old Milwaukee – a fitting ale for the occasion. Everyone proudly showed off baby pictures and showed us videos on iPods of those kids doing cool things, riding bikes, etc. We showed pictures right back. It was wonderful and pleasant. Davey made hilarious, pithy comments. Didier, Hinz and Klug performed the typical band stand up between songs. Oh, and the songs came out well. All are from the upcoming Heresy & the Hotel Choir, an album that builds upon the peerless sound that this band has been working on for going on four years now. The keeper moment that you should listen to on repeat is (well, the entire song “For Science Fiction”) but particularly the very end of the song when Davy completely thrashes his voice for us, for you really. It’s another spirited contribution from one of our all-time favorites. – Sean Moeller

First song
Guns of Navarone (Maritime) [2.78MB] [2280 downloads]


– original version appears on Heresy & the Hotel Choir
This is the only song that I can’t really remember what the song sounded like when it started or how it came to be the way it is. What is funny about this song is that the lyrics were written while I was driving to the studio in rush hour traffic. Total “Behind the Music” style…Sadly, as we were recording them, we made a few changes to the first lines, and they had to change all the way down to have a logical flow. I think the final version is actually the best though, and feels pretty natural.

Second song
With Holes for Thumb-Sized Birds (Maritime) [2.95MB] [2288 downloads]


— original version appears on Heresy & the Hotel Choir
This is my favorite song on the album. Sometimes songs are directly affected by what you listen to and are influenced by. For ‘Holes’, this was the case. The song was sort of dead in the water. We had a lot of ideas, but nothing was really paying the sort of dividends we were looking for. So, one day at practice, I played a song I was really into and said, “What if we treat the rhythm like this?” We tried it, made some tweaks, and the song went from there.

Third song
For Science Fiction (Maritime) [2.80MB] [2235 downloads]


— original version appears on Heresy & the Hotel Choir
This song was one of the two early songs that started by recording the bass. At first, it seemed to be the b-side of the two, but at some point it took a huge leap and ends up being a cornerstone of the record. This sort of unexplainable movement that songs have on their own is easily the most awesome part of playing in a band. Lyrically, it’s as forthright as we’ve ever been, and will hopefully sever us from the misunderstanding that we are part of the ambiguously religious music out there.

Fourth song
Pearl (Maritime) [4.77MB] [2285 downloads]


— original version appears on Heresy & the Hotel Choir
This song went through a ton of iterations. It started as the song ‘Peril’, actually. We brought that nugget of a song into our practice space and changed the rhythm, tempo, key, chord progressions, etc. many times over until it became what it is. It was one of the first songs we worked on for the record which, at that time, was early on in our new “Maritime 3.0” line up so I was super psyched about it. You never really know how a line up change is going to affect your band so starting out of the gate with ‘Pearl’ is not too shabby if I do say so my damn self.