Spanish Prisoners

A Point Of Light Sadness

Apr 5, 2009

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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley

Leo Maymind is at his finest when he's sorrowful, but still feigning optimism as his musical alter ego Spanish Prisoners. The repetition of life delivers a strangling or two every once in a while, just turning whomever's closest purple and red from the disconnection of air, but Maymind tries to find the little glimpses to be excited about in the mix of all the unpleasantries, when the backs are against the wall and everything's shown in the pall of overcast skies. In "Song For The Weary," on an album entitled Songs To Forget, the Spanish Prisoners sound takes us through a process that is the equivalent of an apple starting as a small round nugget dangling from a wooden umbilical cord, growing into a greened teenager of sorts before filling into its body and rounding into a red orb of juices and waxy skin. At this point, the apple, no longer a tart and unwanted item, is desired by everyone who spots it. The birds and the animals want it to fall to the earth, drooling upward at the possibility. But the bugs and worms don't wait that long. They climb across those high-wired limbs, wriggle down the tight umbilical cord and burrow into that apple's flesh, eating away until they're bloated. The bugs and worms get what they want - a kind of drunkenness that comes from a feast taken beyond what's necessary. The apple has done its job, or at least one of them. The rotting core falls to ground and the seeds find their way into the soil and so begin another tree or two, if they're not yanked or cut before they've had a chance to become something. These trees full of apples will be looked upon with anticipation and admiration when they begin to produce their own fruit and so again the insects will attack and never let the cycle come to a stalling. It will go on and go on, just as the man goes on in Maymind's song, first as the flower that's being approached by the metaphoric woman (the bee), who also seems to have a thing for playing the age-old love game of pulling the petals from a virile flower's head with the alternating statements of "he loves me" and "he loves me not." This man continues on as a different incarnation, becoming a thorn bush and as one, he's less attractive and painfully covered. This all passes though, as Maymind delivers the lines with a voice that sounds as if it's gazing, as if it's made out of eyes that are big and wet and longing for a spring morning that it will have to wait a decently long time for. He gives a soft temper to his songs and at the end of this particular song, filled with sad posts and little real drama, he sings about soon becoming a garden - filled with various fruits and vegetables - and what comes after that but the flower again and then there are more bees to be dealt with and that's kind of the point.

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1. first song

   Welcome to Daytrotter

   
2. second song

   How The Fallen Fell

   

   - original version appears on Songs To ForgetThis was one of the first songs written and recorded for our debut record. The band and music was still very much in its infancy at that time, and the arrangement ended up becoming quite layered on the album version. On the tour leading up the session, we were opening a few shows for John Vanderslice and were just playing as a duo of guitar and keys / glockenspiel, so we had to figure out how to best represent the songs with those limited means. The lyrical theme of someone losing themselves despite having many material possessions that runs through this song actually seems fitting with the sparser arrangement we played here.

3. third song

   Mantequilla

   

   - original version appears on Songs To ForgetThis is a proper love song that I wrote after giving myself such an assignment. I tried to use somewhat flowery language without coming off as cliche, so the lyrics went through a number of re-writes. The band has now moved away from this kind of simple folk aesthetic because we have a full rhythm section, so we haven't played this song live for a while.

4. fourth song

   Song For The Weary

   

   - original version appears on Songs To ForgetA pretty simple, almost country-esque song that I wrote a few years ago, originally as a poem for a creative writing class I was taking at the time. The only song that featured banjo- we still close with those song at shows.

5. fifth song

   Where God Does His Laundry

   

   - original version appears on Songs To ForgetThis is the first song on the record even though it was the last song to be recorded. It ended up being my favorite song on the album. My dear friend Leo Deluca, from Southeast Engine, played drums in my basement and we threw it together pretty quickly. This song is just about a child's view of the world and how that innocence can still be found deep within an older person. I loved the imagery of God doing his laundry in some run-down part of town, having to deal with people hassling him.