FROM THE ARCHIVE - "Out Of the Oceans" (2007)

It was a cold, rainy Saturday night in early November of 2007.  I had attended a funeral earlier that day and the weather seemed an exact expression of what it feels like driving home from a graveyard. We had booked some studio time in Philadelphia and were in the middle of a multi day session recording demos of new material. The studio was in an ancient warehouse on the outskirts of Kensington. It looked and felt somewhat desolate framed by the driving autumn rain.  

As we approached the studio rooms I felt a sinking in my stomach. I was going to be working on vocals for a new song I had written about childhood depression and disillusionment called “Out of the Oceans”. The song was very special to me and I wanted to do a worthy job with the vocals. I was hoping for some magic to happen but wasn’t sure it would. The funeral had disturbed me and left me in an unsteady place.

When we started tracking, the engineer used a vocal technique of placing the mic halfway across the room. It was another thing taking me out of my comfort zone. I had never done anything like it before and was used to having a mic right in front of me to work off of. This was very revealing and the nature of the lyrics and melody were also so revealing that I felt almost completely exposed. I wanted to give up and do something else but I put my head down and got to work. 

We made our way through the song and I was feeling very good about it until we got to the end. The lyrics were heavy for me. “And it’s wrong that I don’t understand you”, that line was aimed at God. I felt it hard but didn’t know what to do with it. We ran a few takes and on one I just let it rip. I put myself back at that damn funeral and let something happen. The vocal take was something of a cathartic, primal scream, something I wasn’t intending. After the take I wanted to do another because I thought it was just too much to scream that line, but the guys in the room loved it and convinced me to keep it. 

This song would later appear in a more fully realized and glorious version on the album Rabbit. But I have a fondness for this demo recording. It was imperfect and somewhat incomplete. But we captured something with the vocal performance and I can still hear the drenching rain in the recording and in my soul.

-Patrick McGowan 

This recording of "Out of the Oceans" was performed in 2007 by:

Patrick McGowan - Vocals, Guitar

Dan McGowan - Bass

Kyle Minnick - Drums

Lyrics written by Patrick McGowan