Holiday Parade have been hard at work since their last release to create False Alarms. The band is putting out the seven track EP today, and it was recorded and produced by Matt Malpass (Cute Without The E, Lydia). Andy from the band was kind enough to write us up a track-by-track guide to the meaning behind each of the songs. Read them all below!

False Alarms
This song is one that Michael and I started putting together in late 2009. At the time our last record, “Tickets…” had been finished for a while and we were going through a bit of an identity crisis. We were writing every kind of song you could imagine. Searching for our “sound”. Eventually we settled down a bit and wrote the foundations of  “False Alarms”. It’s a tune about desperately wanting to escape your surroundings.  It started off as just a verse that fall. Then last spring I sat in a session with my good friend Adam Richman and we came up with what eventually became the chorus. The song was definitely something that came together over time.  But sometimes, that’s how the best ones happen.

Off Your Shoulders
This is another one that was written over the course of the last year. It started off with that verse guitar riff (originally on a piano), and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out the right direction to take it. It originally had a completely different verse and chorus and was a “hate” song about a girl I had dated. We called it “Wake Me When it’s Over”. But after a bit of time sitting on it and reworking last December, it became what it is today. This is Michael and my favorite on the record. 

Virginia
Virginia is a song about a dream I had a while back about crashing and breaking up a wedding of an old flame. The whole “speak now or forever hold your peace” moment.  It originally had a third verse I really loved, but ended up having to cut for one reason or another. It went: “Oh Virginia. Lord knows what’s supposed to be. But today at your reception everything came clear to me.  And every time I saw you I tried to be the bigger man. But Virginia, this time, I don’t think I can…”It’s a song about being regretting the way things went down in a past relationship and going to absolutely any extent to amend them.

Lying
Lying is a love song. Through and through. It’s a song about falling in love with a persons quirks. The things that make them original. It’s also one of my favorites on the album. 

Gone
If you have followed the band over the past few years, you will probably recognize that this is not a brand new song. We recorded 2 different versions of this one in the past, a demo and a version for our last record, “Tickets & Passports”.  When we were listening to the finals from “Tickets…” something about Gone felt out of place. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but we all agreed that it was best to leave this song on the bench this time around and potentially use it for something in the future. When we were putting the foundations of this album together, one of the guys brought up potentially using “Gone”. We sat on it for a bit and eventually decided to go for it, but only if we could really bring it to its full potential (production-wise). This is one of the songs we did with Paul Reeves up in Athens (GA) and he nailed it. The  approach we decided on was a Daniel Lanois/Stuart Price (U2) sort of styling, with the vocal being the grounding surrounded by atmospheric elements. I couldn’t be happier with how this one came together

Home
We actually recorded this song in the summer of ’09 with Paul Barber up in Maryland. We have always been big fans of Paul’s work and were super excited to sit down and put something together with him. We brought in our friend Bobby (My Favorite Highway) to play drums, and spent the first 2 days working through the tune in the live room at Paul’s studio. We really wanted to keep it simple production-wise as not to dress it up with too many elements.  The song itself is about meeting someone and wanting to run away with them.  The idea that home is not where you are, but the person you are with.

She Came Around
This is a song Michael, Paul Reeves, and myself put together this spring up in Athens GA when we were finishing up the record up there. We wanted to write one more track, and this one came together very organically. The song has a very classic feel and we used a lot of Americana production references to really help bring that out. The meaning is pretty self-explanatory.