Track By Track: Man Overboard

(Photo: Emily Ibarra)

The members of Man Overboard take AP track by track through their self-titled album, which is out tomorrow via Rise Records.

“Rare” (Zac Eisenstein)
“Rare” was always the song that blew our minds most, probably because we never played anything that fast in Man Overboard before. I think it was interesting to add the dynamic of fast parts to this album, especially in the first song. It is one of the different elements that is found on Man Overboard self-titled that we never toyed with in the past. 


“Teleport” (Nik Bruzzese)
This is one of my favorite songs on the record, I worked my ass off with the guitar work for this song trying to get it right, Steve [Klein, producer], Zac and I took our time with the bridge of this song all night one evening. Absolutely love this jam.


“Voted Most Likely” (Nik Bruzzese)
This song reminds me of Steve Klein. I wrote the lyrics to this song on my BlackBerry when we were on tour with Senses Fail, and it reminded me of something completely different. After having Steve help us out with everything on our album, it for some reason reminds me the most of him, out of any other song on the album.


“Dead End Dreams” (Nik Bruzzese)
This was a last-minute song. We demoed this out in my studio about a week before recording started and felt it had to make the record. It seems like this song happens to be the story of everyone in the band’s life right now.


“Somethings Weird” (Wayne Wildrick)
This is one of my favorite songs that I’ve ever recorded with this band. The day Zac showed me what he had written on the acoustic, we got right to work. This song represents an awakening within a relationship—the lyrics are desperate and the relentlessness of the music really drives the point.


“Punishment” (Justin Collier)
If there is one thing I am a sucker for, it's a sad, dark, emotional song—and “Punishment” is exactly that. I'm not a sad person by any means, but I really dig the lyrics in this song. It is a Nik song, and I feel he always writes sad tunes. I also really enjoy the dynamics of the different parts; the first verse and the second verse are different, and the bridge pulls everything together for me.


“Not The First” (Mike Hrycenko)
This wasn’t one of the songs we worked on before we got into the studio; we pretty much put it all together in preproduction. I still call it “New Song” when I’m talking about it. It was a challenge for me to get good enough with all the transitions that I felt confident tracking, but I think it’s one of my favorites on the record. I feel like it’s pretty heavy, and the little roll on the ride in the bridge is super tight, if I do say so for myself. In the breakdown where it says, “…to have someone steal your heart away,” we always say, “Do you know what it’s like to ball with Penny Hardaway?”


“Headstone” (Zac Eisenstein)
We called this 'H20 Song' for a while, because we thought it was super manly, fast and punk. I thought of this riff in a hotel room in Arizona, wrote the lyrics in the back of the van and here it is, on our album.

“Spunn” (Nik Bruzzese)
This was a forgotten song that our friend, Jimmy Dunn, brought to our attention when we stayed at his house in Texas. He had Zac's old demo of the song on a burnt CD in his closet and dug it out for us, because he remember how much he liked it when Zac first showed him. Steve wanted us to say “play the record” instead of CD. We won that battle.


“Picture Perfect” (Mike Hrycenko)
This song had like 10 different names, because of the line about the ’59. It reminded everyone of [Gaslight Anthem’s] “The ‘59 Sound,” so we decided not to call it “59.” Steve has a ’67, so we almost called it that, but it didn’t fit right syllabically into the line in the song and it was stupid to say ’59 and call it ’67. The whole time I was tracking, I was pretending to be Pat Wilson from Weezer, just trying to keep it simple but rock steady as hell.


“Night Feelings” (Wayne Wildrick)
Nik and Zac are big 311 fans’ I feel that really shows in the bridge. I make fun of them constantly for repping that band, but it's cool, we're all boys. Steve also made us change the first line of the song because we sounded like “creeps.” Hopefully one day we can release the real version and you can all be the judge of that.


“Atlas” (Justin Collier)
A few people who I have showed this song to have noted that it is kind of a wild card of a song for this album. It doesn't exactly fit the same feel as the other songs—but now that I think about the last song on Before We Met and Real Talk are both kind of like that, so maybe that is our thing. Either way, I hope this song identifies with kids who feel awkward in the world and aren't sure who they want to be yet. That’s fine; listen to punk rock, and you'll figure it out. I've been listening to Zac's lyrics since we met in sixth grade, and these are some of my favorite he's ever written.