Liner Notes for ‘See the Sun’
Liner notes for the song “See the Sun” from the special edition vinyl release:
we recorded our debut album and got on the radio and went on tour and didn’t become huge rock stars like we had planned. afterwards, i went to paris for the summer to drink and smoke cigarettes and work on a screenplay with my friend.
i was still depressed when i got back, especially since our record company had been dismantled and it was anyone’s guess whether we would ever make another album, or if i even wanted to.
‘see the sun’ was the first song i wrote in all that morass, kind of a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thing. my friend didn’t like it, said it was too pop. i kind of liked the idea of a pop song, and anyway i couldn’t get the melody out of my head. i liked the feeling of being lost and broken and on drugs and all of it being ok.
Geoff Stanfield made a demo with some demented string parts. then i moved to los angeles to get out of one record deal and into another. i recorded a different version with michael belfer and josh freese, produced by our geffen a&r guy, Jim Barber, but it maybe felt too heavy.
this here is the version that helped define the sound of its eponymous album, produced by yours truly, with two of the best drummers alive on the track — matt chamberlain on the choruses and kenny aronoff in the verses. god that sony money was sweet while it lasted. tom lord-alge put his special polish on the mix, though not before giving me shit for my terrible pro tools editing (i was still learning at the time).
i really wanted it to be this monstrous pop song, alternative rock for the age of britney spears. i wanted it to be bright and colorful and propelled by andy’s underworld synths and shimmery clean electrics.
in the end, sony let go of half their workforce, including everyone who knew who we were, and the people who were left didn’t know what to do with this song (“it’s too pop for rock radio, too rock for pop radio”).
so i took the album back and built a website to find people who might want to hear it. that worked out pretty well, so i have no complaints.
[Get STS on #vinyl at https://ghostmuttrecords.bigcartel.com/product/black-lab-see-the-sun-special-edition-vinyl]
