All Get Out released their fantastic new album called The Season on September 20th via Favorite Gentlemen Recordings. Nathan Hussey from the band was kind enough to write up a Track-By-Track guide behind each of the songs for PropertyOfZack. If you haven’t checked out the album yet, make sure to. Read up on the Track-By-Track below!

My Friends: The first completed version of this song dates back to barely 2008. Lyrically, it’s an angry song from a different time in life. Sassy and bitter really. I was probably over whatever had happened before hand when I wrote this but kept going anyways. Musically it started out as a two minute rock song with one chorus, but Matt Malpass and Jeremiah Edmond helped us stretch that out to about three or so. They did a lot of that and with great “know-how” on the entire record. It’s the most straight forward song we have and the obvious choice for an opening track.

Church Doors and Skeptics: This was another one that was changed a lot in the studio even though it was newly written. The chorus I first wrote wasn’t working with the scheme of the record as a whole. It was lack luster and so were it’s verses. We moved the verse to a bridge and I had to rewrite the the verse melody and chorus altogether. Matt was the most excited about this song because we used some large Weezer guitar tones and the structure was just perfect for what he wanted for us. It didn’t end up being an album favorite for most of us but it later grew as one my top three from it. 

Lucky Bastard: Though this is the main song for feedback from fans and reviews I still am very happy with it. It replaced Water and God. I’m so happy about that. The influence of this song is from “The Difference” by The Wallflowers. It’s not the most noticeable influence but if you get it then you get it. It’s always a good feeling when you do something by the book and it actually works. Structurally it’s a standard; Intro, verse, instrumental,verse, chorus, etc…Acoustic guitars and organs flying in and out with trumpets instead of guitar solos. Super fun to record and watch come together. The wide spectrum of tones unbelievably matches up. The verses are picked 3rd’s on clean Vox/Fender combos and the chorus is played with second inversion chords with three bass fuzz pedals slammed into a Fender Bassman. That into the cheesy organs on the verses to the spacey lead parts…crazy. Lyrically it’s as simple as it as deep with references to old Pedro the Lion records and lyrics. 

Subject to Change: This was the odd ball of the record. We did this demo about a month before we started the record and the only thing we could say about was that it was super fun to play. It was a new sound for us. I was nervous in pre production because I didn’t know if it would make it with the rest of the songs. Instead it sort of broke up the album just right. Matt and I got carried away between a bottle of whiskey and this old organ he owned on a number of songs, this one in particular. We later had to back that down because it was almost all organ in the opening “riff” instead of guitar. The vocals on the chorus were addicting to track and unbelievably high. I did an acoustic version by myself before the band demo and record version and I must have re-tracked the harmonies for over an hour just for pleasure. The lyrics on this one rarely use adjectives and metaphors. That was different for me. I love describing things, or trying to anyways, in new ways. Something compelled me to go straight forward and it worked.

Son of Mine: This song dates back to 2008 with My Friends. It’s the first part of a trilogy (Son of Mine, Let me Go, Come and Gone). It’s obvious here that we’ve all listened to Death Cab for Cutie and were ok with pulling from their sound a little bit. I felt that with the discretion of Matt and our sound it worked very well. It’s the first song we tracked vocals to. I remember being nervous after that first day because it didn’t quite go as well. We decided to not autotune the record on main vocals. Growing up in the age of autotune is spoiling, thus the surprise of how long it actually takes to track vocals “the old way”. It did however get easier as we were tracking for 10 plus hours a day. You just sort of find the zone. Im a big fan of how we broke the cycle here and left the chorus in the same octave as the verse. Were known for having an on/off dynamic so having a song that showed restraint was important for the record.

Me and My Lovers: Ok, I was being a jackass when I wrote this song. It’s got an attitude that is some what apathetic and forfeiting. I kick myself in the song for being attracted to people who have baggage and issues because of my strange need to help people that I’m incapable of helping, if that makes sense. I basically give up on ever retaining a healthy relationship in this song. The humorous part is that I found my wife shortly after finishing this. So I can reflect on that time when playing it live, but it no longer applies. Awesome. Sonically it’s loaded with guitars and dirty organs. My favorite part is the slide guitar on the bridge. We did a lot of that on the record and was always a successful choice of instrumentation. I remember Jeremiah asking if the intro melody was a rap song….wtf Jeremiah…yeah…it’s a Lil Wayne song…damn.

Girl Gun: This and Lucky Bastard were the only songs that stayed the same, structurally, on the entire record. Just like My Friends, this is an older bitter, immature, mean song that we just had to do. In interviews I’ve told people that these songs were untouched (lyrically) because it’s a history of our band, young and old. We had a field day with 808 bass drops, crazy slide fuzz guitar that can probably never be accurately re-created, dual drums, and strings. We got a chance at the end of this to bring out our hardcore-aspirations with a short “breakdown” right before the outro. We went all out on production here. What a good time.

The Season: My personal favorite. This is about starting the band and doing all the touring and all of the fights in between. I was not happy when we reshaped this song. I was being super stubborn in my head but was able to keep my mouth shut, somehow. Very glad I did because it turned out so much better. I stayed the night at the studio a few times to rewrite and record the chorus to this song and a few others. I had recently been listening to a lot of Every Time I Die so the chorus is sort of pansy version of a Keith Buckley’s yelling. At least that was the goal. It’s basically one progression with subtle differences which is a challenge to make work without boring the listener. I feel like we managed to use enough instrumentation to make that unnoticeable. It’s fun to play this live because it’s wilder like we used to be (live). Fuzz guitars are everywhere and strings to make it even thicker. There’s even a section of us breaking about ten beer/whiskey bottles on the concrete. It was a super cheesy idea that we just couldn’t turn down!

Let Me Go: Crowd favorite for sure. This generated an eternal comparison to another band, but got the attention of crowds who probably didn’t want to hear a young opener. We needed this song. It’s long and emotional and by all means a tad depressing, but it’s been helpful to some. It’s proven itself relatable. A part of me wanted to keep this song live but our fans have been so loyal and patient that we felt we owed it to them to record it. I don’t want to elaborate here too much because it’s a song better left open for interpretation. Not that it’s a stick of gold…it’s just important to those older fans. We had a funny problem in recording this song. Everyone forgot that the outro was actually a Colour Revolt song that we just sort of developed into playing. We couldn’t record that so we decided to have it transition into it’s third part.

Come and Gone: Lyrically the best of I’ve done. I tried to write in the moment of an irrational feeling and stay there until I was done but from an older point of view. This leaves open doors for more songs to come as part of this story and maybe some more releases and versions. This one was done in the same thought as Subject to Change except maybe it’s polar opposite. We had Andy Lee play slide and guitar on this one and it made a huge difference. A different ear on the record always changes perspective. His taste is outstanding. Mel was responsible for all string arranging on the record and a lot of the post production keys and noises. His ideas shine here. The ending was very different for us and very emotional. I cried like a girl on the demo of this. Were not that emo it was just a special point in time. I believe this was the producers favorite as well. Mel produced the string outro as well with the guys from Kopecky Family Band as a gift for me for finishing the record. It was beautiful and again made me cry…like a girl. Ask my wife, I cry over any show or song. Grey’s Anatomy hurts me.