Track-By-Track: Set It Off, 'Cinematics'

Making waves in pop-rock with a theatrical foundation since their inaugural EP, Baby, You Don't Tripajaharda, the band’s debut full-length  doesn’t slow things down with a heavy dose of orchestral arrangements, including the band’s own members performing on clarinets and trumpets throughout. Hitting shelves September 18 on Equal Vision, frontman Cody Carson wrote up a guide to the songs for AP. Check it out below and stream the record, too.

1. “Thoughts That Breathe”
Because of the orchestral importance in the Set It Off sound, we thought we'd introduce the songs with a dark, driving, brief orchestral composition. I'm a huge fan of film scoring and classical music in general. This intro started as me just fooling around with some strings and we all ended up liking it so much that we decided have it introduce the album. It is heavily influenced by Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight) and just a dash of Danny Elfman (Edward Scissor Hands, The Nightmare Before Christmas).

2. “Nightmare”
I have had really bad anxiety since I can remember. I'd like to attribute that to the multiple horror films I would watch as a very young child. My mind always jumps to the worst case scenario and it manifests these terrible thoughts that haven't even happened yet. The second verse is about a specific anxiety attack I had. I was in a movie theatre sitting at the top row when, for no reason at all, I get this awful gut feeling that someone in my family is hurt. The thought didn't disappear. It exacerbated until I had to get up and attempt to call my mom to check on her. I started to walk down the stairs when suddenly I got tunnel vision and my entire body went cold. I fell to the floor of the theatre lobby and screamed for help. I literally thought I was dying. I was living in a nightmare. The bridge of this song compares anxiety attacks to plunging to your death from atop a building. You can almost see your end right in front of you and you feel helpless until you hit the ground. Then, you end up right back at the top of that building looking down wondering what the hell just happened.

3. “Swan Song”
Swan Song: n. A person's final public performance or professional activity before retirement.
This song is meant for the people that have had someone they care about walk out of their life completely. There have been people in my life who promised they'd never leave my side. Some of them have stayed true to their word and some have abandoned me entirely. I wrote this song to be my last ditch effort to get in touch with them again before throwing in the towel on the relationship all together.

4. “Plastic Promises”
This was probably the most fun to work on in the studio. Having played clarinet for 13 years and being as into jazz, it was too fun having the opportunity to incorporate the two into a song. Dan Clermont and myself were in the Tarpon Springs High School Jazz Ensemble, and I learned a lot about the structure of jazz songs. Knowing that Dan plays the trumpet as well as he does, I decided to insert a challenging horn feature into this song. There's a be-bop feel and also a really dirty, sexy half-time swing section. The real challenge was figuring out how to evenly integrate fast swing and rock without leaning heavily on either side of the musical plane. The subject of this song is becoming fed up with being handed empty promises and just moving on.

5. “I'll Sleep When I'm Dead”
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I don't sleep. I have a real problem with going to bed at a decent hour and always have. I guess you could say I'm a self-proclaimed insomniac and it sucks to say the least. It does have its perks like more productive evenings, though. This song is focused on the delirium that ensues after many sleepless hours. When we brought this song into the studio with Zack and Ken, we weren't sure if it was going to make it onto the record. I didn't write melodies or lyrics for anything but the chorus at that point, but I had a really good feeling about it. So Dan grabbed the guitar to play the chords while I sifted through some melody ideas I had. We went into the live room and within 15 minutes I had melodies to the entire song. We brought it back for everyone to hear, and we all instantly got very excited about it. My assignment that night was to write the lyrics to this song. Naturally, I didn't get to it until 4am. The sleep deprivation was settling in, and I was in the perfect mood for it. The most fun part about our songs, to me, are the moods cultivated by the orchestral instruments. Pay attention to the driving staccato string ensemble in the second verse and the “ghost choir” in the bridge.

6. “No Control”
The hardest thing I've had to learn in life is that there are going to be unfortunate things that happen to you and the people around you and also that some of these things are completely out of your control. Sometimes you have no choice but to watch something beautiful fall apart right in front of your eyes, whether it be a parents' divorce, losing a loved one, terminal illness, or anything that you personally cannot remedy. You have to learn that life isn't always necessarily fair and to make the best out of what you have while you still have it. This song is basically my accepting this fact of life. It's also my way of venting about certain things of this nature that I've had no choice but to endure. This song is the first time we've experimented with the standard “pop/punk beat” and honestly we had a blast with contrasting the speed of that to the power of a halftime chorus.

7. “Dream Catcher”
One night Dan had a dream that Set It Off was playing the Ford Amphitheater (our hometown arena) and it was sold out. In this dream show, he played the guitar parts you hear in this song. He woke up, played it out, and brought it to rehearsal. When Dan brought the guitar parts to the table at practice and we all started jamming it, we all knew this song was going to make the album. This is probably the most feel-good song on the record. This song is a celebration of how far we've come these past four years. We're on the right track, on a great label, with a great team behind us. We're very excited about what the future holds for us and we encourage you to go out and chase whatever it is you want to be.

8. “Freak Show”
When I was growing up, I often struggled to find out exactly who I was. What category did I fit under? What group of friends would I fit in with? Did I dress weird? Am I a crazy person? There was literally a week of my life where I wore baggy shorts, baggy shirts, and silver chains around my neck. I was confused, to say the least. Eventually I snapped out of it and realized that it didn't matter how others perceived me. I'm going to let my actions reflect exactly who I am and how I feel. If people catch on, great, if not, then I really don't care.

9. “Distance Disturbs Me”
We live in a new age of relationships. Thanks to resources such as Skype and Facebook, you can meet someone and end up liking them without even meeting them. Unfortunately, sometimes that person can end up living miles and miles away. This song is applicable to anyone out there who has to rely on a screen to see the person they care about. It's a very bittersweet feeling, especially for me. I find that I can't handle long distance relationships easily, even if I really like the person, so I end up not going through with it.

10. “Dad's Song”
On May 10th, 2008 my father, James Charles Carson, passed away due to cancer after battling it for five years. Since that day, I have been trying to write this song. I am a very self-critical and overly analytical person, so naturally it was a near impossible task. There are a few things in this song that I know mean a lot to me that I'd like to let you in on. My dad was a trumpet player—he lived and breathed his instrument. In the pre-chorus and bridge, you will hear a trumpet playing. That is Dan Clermont playing one of my dad's favorite trumpet melodies on my dad's favorite trumpet. Also, when I flew home from college to be with my family because of his passing, he had recently told me to chase this dream of mine. When I entered the kitchen, there was a note on the fridge. It read, “There are no shortcuts to success. Love Dad”. That phrase has really pushed me and that is why I featured it as a lyric in the chorus of this song. Time will heal the wound. This song is a long time coming, but I am very proud of how it turned out.

11. “I'd Rather Drown”
There is some palpable anger in this song. I consider myself a kind, forgiving guy, but if I'm going to be nice to you, do not betray me. I don’t tend to open up to a lot of people. It's hard for me to tear down my walls for a girl in a relationship because I've been betrayed so many times. This is the story of a girl who has a reputation for playing with men's emotions that I was completely unaware of. The story is: I liked her, she said she liked me, we flirted a lot and talked about a relationship. She lived slightly far away, so I said we should stay friends. The absolute next day she had a boyfriend. Found out that another friend of mine went through the same thing with her just a week before me.

12. “The Grand Finale”
On our first full US tour we were spending an off day in San Francisco. We were all outside enjoying the amazing weather when, out of a nowhere, an emergency siren began to scream throughout the entire city. Every citizen who was out walking their dog or out for a jog stopped dead in their tracks. You could almost feel the collective hearts drop to the floor. It was the siren that you would expect to be followed by a nuclear impact or an earthquake. Then we hear, “This has been a test.” The collective sigh of relief was overwhelming. Then I began thinking, what if that actually was the end of my life? What if that was the end of the world, right then and there? How would I handle that? This final track takes you through the final hours of a man and a woman's life as they try to survive the imminent end.