Buzz Blog
The Arcadians consist of James McIntyre (drums), Clark Wiesenberg (keys), Matt Orr (lead vox/ guitar) and KC Hooker (bass). Three of the four members hail from Provo. Orr says the band takes cues from local favorite Fictionist, as well as Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie, along with folky, ambient bands like Fleet Foxes.
The Arcadians are in the process of recording their first full-length album, No More Nightmares, which is scheduled to drop this fall. The EP release show was at Velour Saturday, July 28.
For more information about the battle of the bands, read CW blog Gavin’s Underground’s take on it here. You can also visit The Arcadians’ Facebook page for band updates.
Matt Orr took some time to discuss four tracks off of She Miles in Monotone (cover art pictured above) with City Weekly:
photo courtesy of The Arcadians
“Social Suicide”:
This song I wrote late one night a few years back after reading an article on CNN about a mental patient killing himself. He had this elaborate plan to behave himself for, like, two months so he could get the room with the window. The day he got the room, he jumped out and killed himself. I wrote the outline of the song to mimic the timeline of his plan/jump. The intro starts out all happy, but it drops and gets super serious and almost haunting in the verses. The outro, of course, is the jump, with that eerie big walk down we do. Lyrically speaking, I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of what a messed-up mind thinks all day. These lyrics are what I would imagine a paranoid schizo would write in his notebook 50 times. This song has been refined and worked on for a good two years with the band. We feel it’s our tightest.
“She Smiles in Monotone”:
On a broad spectrum, this song is about going through life not caring, but pretending to -- smiling in monotone, if you will. There are a lot of lines throughout this songs about girls and God (our band comes from very religious backgrounds), as there are in much of our songs, but the overlying theme is faking happiness.
“Everybody Loves a Happy Ending”:
A while back, I was in Portland for a while. While gone, I found out my girlfriend-at-the-time's father passed away. I was trapped in Portland while she had to go through all this. This song is about good beginnings and hard endings. It leans more toward the idea that not everybody ends up with a happy ending. Depressing, I know.
“Masks”:
A bonus track on this record, only available when you buy the physical copy. The idea of mirrors kind of gets my mind all tied up in knots; I like to think there is a parallel universe on the other side. It’s more of a window than a reflection. This song rooted from the idea of someone pretending to be me on the other side of the mirror, but it turned into a song about love (surprise, surprise).
