11. Alsace-Lorraine

When I'm writing music, tunes emerge out of their sketches in an organic way.  The music usually comes first, then the lyrics/subject matter are brought into sharper focus after a lot of scanning and crossing out.  But this song was different, because most of my stuff is about something or tells a story.  This particular tune doesn't.  In fact, it's not about anything in particular except the general malaise I was feeling leading up to this album.  I felt that I had a really good song here and just battered my way through until it was complete.  It didn't need a meaning, it just needed to be done.  The result was surprising even for me.  I didn't intend to sing the verses in that abrasive whisper, but it seemed best at the time.  And it was done very quickly.  I believe we just used the entire second take.  The ba-ba-bah parts were murder.  I'm singing all the parts (I was my own backup singer on this entire album) and double tracking them.  To make matters more difficult, it's getting late and certain people who aren't me are getting uncharacteristically impatient and cranky.  But we got everything in the can and I promptly forgot about most of the unpleasantness.  I also didn't expect much from the tune.  But come mixing time the following week, it really stood out as a very fine rock song.  I apologize that it's not about anything.  Like I said, I vastly prefer to write about specific things or tell stories or express flawed opinions and so on.  You don't get that here.