Candle
Questioning All Of The Pulses And What's On Their Mind
May 3, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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For Today
unreleased
This song was written during a strange time in my life, just a couple of weeks before we left on a big tour. I had just finished school and was living in San Diego and was in a relationship and everything was going great, but at the same time I had come to a crossroads in my life and felt like I needed to make a change. I guess this song is about how time can drag people away from each other, and nothing is really permanent. The best way to get by, it seems, is to live in the present and take things as they come. I see this song as a companion to "With My Heart," from which it shares a lot of musical characteristics. Lyrically it's kind of the opposite perspective of the same situation, which, to me, is an interesting way to write. I taught this song to Ross and Rachel the morning before we recorded this. They came up with some really great parts and it all came together very nicely.
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Hotel Eyes
original version appears on Miles and Miles and Miles
We were in the studio recording Miles and Miles and Miles and we needed another song to work on. I had been kicking around the chords and first two verses of the songs for a long time but it never felt complete. Ross came up with the chords to the chorus and we worked on it together as a band until it was finished. A lot of the lyrics I had were really personal and raw, but I worked in some details both real and made-up to shape it into somewhat of a story. I think a good way to describe most my songs are as fictional auto-biographies.
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With My Heart
original version appears on Come Back Home
This song was recorded and released about a year ago as part of a split 7" release with our guitarist's Ross other band, Iamb. It is meant to be very simple song that everyone can sing along to. I was going for something like the Band's "The Weight" or "I Shall Be Released." I'm not sure it came out that way, but nonetheless it's a fun song to play live. The lyrics are pretty straight-forward, it's just about being left behind, plain and simple. I think this is a feeling everyone goes through sometime, which is part of the whole idea of the song. It starts off as a singular personal song and becomes this really friendly, communal, sing-along which implies more than the lyrics explicitly state. The meaning is: We're miserable, but at least we're miserable together.
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Like a Train
original version appears on Birds Were Meant to Fly
This song was released on our first album, which is currently out of print. This song is fairly old now, and we have been playing it a little bit differently on almost every tour that we have been on. A couple of shows into this tour I just started playing the "Oh Yoko" harmonica on the end and we've stuck with it since. I wrote the lyrics when I was 18 about a time I drove up the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara (a six-hour drive) to surprise a girl and, as you may guess, it did not turn out well. The lyrics reflect how young and immature I was when I wrote it but, nonetheless, I think that they are effective. It's interesting, when I first wrote it, it was a very bitter song. But since then it's taken a very different meaning for me. Now I just see it as a fun, upbeat song not to be taken too seriously. Chugga-chugga-choo-choo.
There appear to be dead ends or black holes riddling the characters who channel their thoughts into Kevin Coons, singing his country noir guts out in the songs of California band Candle, making them just dizzy enough to know very little about how anything's going to be sorted out. It's a healthy understanding or misunderstanding, however they'd like to accept it, and it leads to intoxicating levels of apprehension and dismay that are ultimately converted into the idea that it's just the way the cookies ALWAYS fucking crumble and there's going to need to be some bucking up, buster, or else these crumbling cookies are going to be the death of you and maybe more. There is a general line of thinking that rumbles like the siren song of a rusty harmonica through the young band's songs that echoes like an empty gasoline drum getting pounded on by a ball pine hammer and it could just be all of the soul-searching roaming that goes on throughout. It's all there - the wide open spaces, the Californian take on American country music, the words that come from a man lost inside his own head and coming to the conclusion that the only way he's going to find anything in this life is to just move, to pick up the bags and just see what all is out there, not just see what all is here. It's a common way of trying to make sense out of the nonsensical, but it can only lead to more riddles cropping up with everyone that gets "solved." The word "solved" probably should always be in quotation marks because it doesn't really mean anything at all other than suggesting a fuzzy perception that can't help but shape-shift and get loose for another chase. There are numerous people - perhaps the same one - just cutting their losses or leaving behind their meager winnings to pursue the enlightenment elsewhere that is supposedly going to be some sort of deliverance, making everything else suddenly get put into its proper place, at which point everyone can settle down to a nice, peaceful supper and conversation. But there are the lingering hopes that there doesn't have to be that journey, no matter how good the idea sounds at the outset. It's one word, one touch, one look away from being a wasted bit of effort and strain, for the tides had adequately turned and there's no need any longer for the goodbyes or the make ups. Candle music is music that feels like good weariness, like the kind of dull ache in the bones that signifies a hard day's work or a little sleep deprivation. It suggests that many different things are making your head hurt at the same time, but are you or are you not still able to take nourishment and make something of an omelet? It all feels like a sunny day that may or may not last longer than another minute if we're unlucky and might not last another 10 minutes if we are. It's a mental atmosphere that takes us into the crippling kinds of complexities that two people who care about one another always find themselves digging through at some point in their relationship - almost more especially if it's a relationship that has any lasting merit or is worth a spit. When Coons sings, "You say the hands of clocks are hard to hold/Restless hearts say so am I," on the terrific new song "For Today," he says it all in so little language that it's beautiful in many ways and it sums up nicely why there's always a tendency to over-think everything the pulse beats out, that sly devil - all of them.
Real Love Records
