To this day, we get the wind knocked out of us whenever a band is punctual. We needed Steel Train in Rock Island by 11 a.m. on this day at the beginning of this month. They were there, right on the dot, even beating us to the studio, a feat that happens every hundredth session, so twice total in this site’s existence. One has a feeling that a band like this New Jersey outfit has gotten to be habitually precise in their timing and planning, having played over 400 shows over the last two years. They always get where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there, only because they’re conditioned to be places in such a manner. This is a compliment and we appreciated it. They were sitting in the stairwell of the studio space awaiting the magic key to pop the deadbolts on all three doors. They were patient and at ease, prepared to play their brand of classic rock – which they’ve applied a more personal touch to on their latest album Trampoline — at a preposterously obtuse hour for it. Coffees should have been the liquid of choice, but there were Old Styles in the fridge and those seemed to do the number. The four songs that the guys laid to tape for us represent what could be an EP of singles from the newest, the band’s sophomore full-length, out in a few weeks on Drive-Thru Records. It’s an album that shows a big leap in maturity and growth in a young band that wasn’t bashful releasing an EP of cover songs from the year 1969 before it had really even made a name for its own music. They were doing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Creedence and sounding dope doing it. They’ve moved into their own terrain and they showed on these cuts – wonderful variations of the originals, sometimes sounding more accomplished melodically than they were when they were recorded for Trampoline. “Dakota” is a stunner (you can say the same about “Firecracker”), with odd carnivalesque/freak show lyrics conjugated with stark private observations, and it was that song in the session that nearly drove Jack Antonoff loony as it took oodles of takes before finally nailing it. All silly stuff causing the fumbles, but what resulted was a piece of sweetness. – Sean Moeller

First song
Black Eye (Steel Train) [3.74MB] [2082 downloads]


– original version appears on Trampoline
This song was meant to be recorded the way we did it here. It has such a great feel when we do it live, all together. I played out of this Silvertone amp they had at Daytrotter, and the lead tone was amazing. I’ve been looking for one every since we left. When I wrote this song, I wanted it to sound like something Blood, Sweat and Tears would have done early on. This recording shows that more than the studio version…so that’s cool. It’s a song that does not hold as much weight as some on the rest of the record. It’s meant to be fun and creepy — both lyrically and musically.

Second song
Firecracker (Steel Train) [3.08MB] [2219 downloads]


— original version appears on Trampoline
Like “Dakota,” this song was a lot of fun to do live and stripped down. The recorded version of this song literally has 30 tracks of percussion. It works amazing on the record, but it’s also great done with five of us. After recording this one here, I hear the song in a totally different way. “Firecracker” is about a trip I took to Vermont on the 4th of July. Actually, the song is really about a ghost that appeared in a firecracker. I like this song because I think only 1 in 50 people will realize how upsetting it is. The music is such pop, that it’s really hard to hear the lyrics for what they are really saying. When I first wrote these lyrics, they were set to this morbid piano ballad that sounded like something of “No More Shall We Part” (Nick Cave). I’m glad we made it sound more like “Obla Di.”

Third song
Dakota (Steel Train) [3.79MB] [1992 downloads]


— original version appears on Trampoline
This song was fun to record at “Daytrotter because we got to do it in a totally different way than the original recording. On the record, “Dakota” has this wall of massive fuzz guitars and Wurlitzers running through the whole song. On this recording, we left all that out just focused on the song and changes. It’s only drums, bass and guitar on this one, and it’s really cool for us to hear it this way, being that the real recording production is huge. We have since completely changed how we play the song live so it’s more like this recording. The lyrics to this song are mostly made up stories. The first and last verses are about experiences I have had in relationships both present and now, and how the world around me has affected them. Each other verse is made up of stories of tragic events ended with death, rape etc. When the chorus comes at the end of each verse, the lyrics are always about this made up place called “Dakota” where everything is ok. Like heaven.

Fourth song
I Feel Weird (Steel Train) [2.92MB] [2060 downloads]


— original version appears on Trampoline
This is my favorite of our new songs. The lyrics are the most important on the record. All of the major issues that are all over the record come together in this song alone. It was the last song we recorded at Daytrotter, and just like everything else, it’s amazing to hear it all pulled back. The lyrics to the song would not make sense without the frantic pop music behind it. It’s so lyrically straight-forward, it sings and reads more like a conversation or speech than anything else. The sadness in the lyrics is so upfront that there needed to be a major contradiction behind it. So the goal for “I Feel Weird’ was to create a really bizarre feeling with contrast of lyrics and music. The song recaps the past four years of my life — everything I’ve lost and come to gain. It’s meant to be an uplifting statement.