Well, new-ish. I included this song on Look Back On This And Laugh but didn't yak about it here yet.
(Hear it at Bandcamp and iTunes.)
This one was especially fun to do. I kept finding myself pushing instruments down instead of up, especially the chorus vocals which seemed so quiet I wasn't sure they were still intelligible. I also used a trick I learned in the studio with Explone: a second lead vocal, run through a distort-y, telephone-style mic and mixed just behind the "clean" vocal track (although in the studio, it was an expensive copper-plated mic thing — mine is just EQ and plug-ins).
Mostly, I'm really happy with the guitars. Just one acoustic and a ton of different electric tracks panned every which way. The mix is a little hissy with room noise but I find myself caring less about stuff like that these days.
I don't want to get into the lyrics too much except to say that everything in the song actually happened at some point, and the "Twin Cinema Plaza" mentioned actually exists, although I'm not sure it's still called that anymore.
It's been years.
Lyrics after the jump...
Whatever Happened To You
75, twin cinema plaza painting lines on the sidewalks in the summer as I recall your pockets were always empty always bumming rides to the old arcade downtown
sometimes I wonder whatever happened to you? sometimes I wonder if you're still out there somewhere yeah I wonder whatever happened to you? whatever happened to you?
summertime sky blazing down on the highway a mile from the curve where your friend took a turn too fast at seventeen years I can leave you behind now and one day we'll all look back on this and laugh
sometimes I wonder whatever happened to you? sometimes I wonder if you're still out there somewhere yeah I wonder whatever happened to you? whatever happened to you?
and you were waiting for me impatiently you couldn't wait for me to get here how did we get here?
sometimes I wonder whatever happened to you? sometimes I wonder if you were ever really me? and I wonder whatever happened to you? whatever happened to you?