A Lot Like Birds released their new album, Conversation Piece, just a few days ago via Doghouse Records. Mikey, Cory, and Michael from the band were kind enough to do a Track-By-Track for PropertyOfZack to let fans in on the process behind the songs on the album. Read up and check out the record!

Orange Time Machines Care:
Mikey: This song is for sure one of the most interesting things I have ever written. Our drummer Joe presented this idea to me of masking 7/8 with 4/4 ideas (playing a two step on the snare while keeping a 7/8 pulse on kick/accenting with symbols; we did several ideas like that). We had jammed out what became the verse to it several times, but I couldn’t go anywhere with the riff on the spot, I felt like it had immense potential that I was going to have to sit down and think about. I took it home and did my best to do just that, 7/8 is a bitch to write in (not to mention transition into 4/4) but I think we pulled it off, this is for sure one of my proudest musical achievements. 
Sidenote: I’m pretty sure the main riff of this song is one of a few that we wrote while playing to images on our projector. Somewhere along the writing process we got the idea to writing music to visually interesting movies/short-films, as if we were scoring it. I wish we had written down which songs were to which movies :/
Cory: As the opening track of the album, this felt like a good song to express where I’d come from the last couple of years preceding this band, which for all intents and purposes was a hazy, impulsive and reckless mess. Coinciding with Kurt’s lyrics, it felt natural to infuse and hint at later themes in the album by lightly addressing cynicism, disillusionment and fading feelings.

Think Dirty Out Loud:
Mikey: To begin with, the title THINK DIRTY OUT LOUD was coined one day when my very hilarious friend was very hung over and went to breakfast with us. Our two friends that were dating at the time were being annoyingly cute, and Jake (my hilarious hung over friend) was making them uncomfortable by turning their conversation into something incredibly sexual. 
Musically the song skeleton was written almost entirely by our drummer Joseph Arrington. He called me one night and told me he had a song somewhere in his head and I asked him to come over to program it into the recording program I demo our songs out on/write with. I then wrote the song starting from the end of the song to the beginning. It was a really interesting take on composing and I think we might try utilizing more interesting writing techniques like it next record.
Cory: This song is about sex. Nothing more, nothing less. I wanted to take the idea of sexual and relationship-oriented euphemisms and blow them out of proportion, ruining the subtle nature they’re intended to have, ie. flipping the idea of “other fish in the sea” to an overt proposal for sex.

Vanity’s Fair:
This is our second oldest song, the music for which was written before Kurt had even joined yet, and I am very surprised to find that it seems to be a crowd favorite so far. I feel like it is the easiest track to listen to for sure, its a jumpin’ track, and I think the main lead of the song/trumpet line is possibly the catchiest thing I have ever put down.
Cory: A somewhat autobiographical confession about being emotionally unreliable and not really being all that concerned with it. A lot to do with the vain approach of using people as means to an end and ditching them when they become attached.
Properties of Friction:
Cory: This is the oldest song we had written, with lyrics and a basic song structure dating all the way back to my old band, Discovery of a Lifelong Error. It discusses the way that an attachment born of lust can sometimes be inexplicably stronger than one of romance. I’d become disappointed in realizing that physical connections were addictive and trumped friendships and relationships nearly every time, even from my own perspective. 
Michael: This is really is old as time. We have a demo of back when I used to sing on it that will be released for the Kickstarter we did to raise money for a van, it has come a long way hahah. 
Funny story: During when we tracked the first demo for this song, I had a terrible tooth infection when Athena (our old violin player) came in to track violin. It was literally the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life, and at one point I was trying to put down a scratch track of what athena was to record, and I started softly sobbing in the middle of the take haha. You can literally hear it in playback, I’m pretty sure we have that saved somewhere haha. Don’t you ever let anyone tell you blood, sweat, and tears don’t go into our music.

Truly Random Code:
Michael: I typically do more riff based or ambient guitar work in our music, this song was an exercise in utilizing interesting chords and voicings. When we were writing this song, and Joe first did what we call “the jungle tom” build up that comes in around 3:17, I’m pretty sure we all lost our shit and just started tribal dancing around our studio.
Cory: Contrary to a lot of the album, I don’t enjoy writing too much about particular people or emotions as much as I like describing a scenario or imagery through lyrical exercise. In fact, writing about relationships was something I challenged myself to do for this album’s sake because I wanted to try something new. This song has a few subtle points that I’d like to keep a secret and have them interpreted by each individual listener but one part that was especially fun to create was an alliterative stacking of S’s on O’s near the end to spell out SOS.

Abbr.:
That’s the abbreviation for abbreviation, GET IT?! This was originally written as a whole song that we were going to split up into two interludes. Unlike Plan B which took 9 months to complete at our leisure, this record was made on a budget and a time crunch, so there were some sacrifices here and there to ensure the important stuff got done. We were under a lot of stress to make this album happen in three weeks, and I have to say I’m proud of everyone for handling it so well, it’s good to know we work well under pressure (pressure down on me, pressure down on you). I’m especially impressed with Kris Crummett, he went ABOVE AND BEYOND to make see it through, literally producing on skype from an Ipad in our friend’s studio after we came home.

The Blowtorch Is Applied to the Sugar:
This song is most dear to me musically, it came out exactly as I had heard it in my head when I had demo’d it on my computer one night. I was afraid to present it to the band, because i didn’t want anything about it to change and for it to just be locked in a vault/mine forever. I’m very glad I didn’t though, it turned out to be some of my favorite performances from everyone in the band, and I’m pretty sure this is my favorite track on the record.
Sidenote: This is the only song (and probably the last) to feature drop A tuning. Disgustingly low.
Cory: Kurt and I came up with the concept for this over the phone after he had watched a movie called Candy and felt eerily similar to one of the characters, and as he described it to me, we realized we both had a whole hell of a lot in common, including some insane things we had both done and been through in our past. The back-and-forth dialogue near the end of the song was an effort to have optimism and cynicism talk to each other as friends.

A Satire of a Satire of a Satire is Tiring:
This song was really hard to sell to the band, believe it or not. It was written pretty early on, but working on it was put off until shortly before we left for Portland. Haha, originally, the electronic beat was made using different syllables I spoke into a mic and cut up/sampled. The tracking for vocals on this song was also put off until after we actually left Portland. I think we are all pretty glad it didn’t get scrapped.
Cory: More or less, this song takes everything about cynicism that was only touched on in the album and puts it way out in the open. I hate cynics. I hate critics. I hate passive-aggression.

Sesame Street is no Place For Me:
Mikey: This is my least favorite song on the record musically. I don’t enjoy writing the up-tempo “Rockin”/”Flashy” songs quite as much, it took a bit of convincing to not wipe it from the slate.
Cory: This song deals with the allure of fame and how people can hop from one thing to the next as long as it seems like they’ll “make it.”
Tantrum (Far From the Tree the Apple Grew Rotten)
Mikey: This song was written the night before Kurt came to our first jam, in fact, when we played it for him the next night, I think we jammed out what became the ending of it for the first time in front of him. I’m pretty sure this is the song that sold it for him, and the first he wrote lyrics to. The demo version of it leaked a long, long time ago, which was unfortunate because its hard to make a strong first impression with a 7 minute song, and the version that got out wasn’t even nearly fully mixed or completed. Cory’s singing part is this song is probably my favorite vocal performance on this record. 
Cory: This song is about growing up and being realistic about how much you can rely on people to care for you, whether it’s a family, friend or lover.

What Didn’t Kill Me Just Got Stronger:
Mikey: The main riff of this track is one I had in my old bag of Riffs-I’m-Not-Sure-What-To-Do-With since I was around 17. It has a very latin flavor to it, which never made sense to jam out with people until I met our Afro-Cuban trained drummer. Joe actually does a adaptation of a classic Songo and Baiao (Which he insists on acknowledging is culturally perverse), and the conga player . There was one point when I was kid of stumped in the writing process where I asked Joe “Where do you see this song going?” and without skipping a beat (so to speak, haha) he just sang this riff idea to me, which I mimicked and loved.
Cory: This song is about the afterlife and how poorly I’ve personally prepared for the possibility of one. If this is my only body and life, which I’m pretty sure it is, I’m gonna live it and destroy it doing extreme things to it.