good morning - good morning seven - polyvinyl
GOOD MORNING SEVEN FACT SHEET
DRY FACTS
- Seventh ‘full-length’ record in ten years by the band Good Morning
- 17 songs, 51 minutes
- Written, recorded and produced by us in Preston, VIC
- Recorded to 16 track 1/2” analog tape
- We did a few overdubs in Joshua Tree, CA and then Tyler Karmen came and mixed it there too
- Mastered by Fred Kevorkian in Brooklyn, NY
- The string quartet was arranged by Chloe Sanger
- Greer Clemens & Dannika Horvat sing harmony
- Glenn Blair (Stefan’s dad) plays woodwinds
FUN FACTS
- We built a studio at the end of 2020 and spent the next year and a half writing and recording this record. We stopped when we had to go on tour for Barnyard in March 2022 and picked up a year later in March 2023 to finish it off.
- The last three Good Morning albums were made in a matter of days, so we wanted to stretch out and take a long time on this one
- We also talked about wanting to make a more melodic, brighter record - one with more vocal harmonies and samples and synths
- We wrote about 70 songs before we started recording. We recorded about 40 of ‘em. These 17 worked best together
TRACK BY TRACK
Arcade
- (Liam sings lead)
- Felt like a good call to start the record with a song that slowly whirrs into life
- Was having lots of dreams at the time about having kids. Every record must have one song about guilt over children I don’t have
- Sonically inspired by the Mariah album Utakata No Hibi
- I can hear the synth cave in this one. The synth cave is where we would set up two synths opposite one another and both do a take at the same time.
Ahhhh (This Isn’t Ideal)
- (Stefan sings lead)
- Written on maybe my most productive day in our studio? Liam and I demoed the instrumental for ahhhh in the afternoon, then he had to leave and I stuck around and wrote the melody to this one and the song ‘dogs on the beach’
- Good Morning commonly gets mistaken as being reverb drenched music, when we never really used it all that much. I feel like this song was the first we made where I really dove into reverb.
- Lyrically it began about my feelings surrounding being in this band at that point, and sorta moved towards a more general song about finding a state of content within your life. Sorta like I grew up wanting to make music for a living, and now that just makes me anxious and suspicious? Just like people I know who go down the path of getting married and having kids etc yet still struggle with their dependencies on drugs and alcohol - nothing’s ever truly ideal, but you gotta appreciate those in between moments when you’re not overwhelmed by it all.
- Sonically it’s inspired by Nina Simone and MGMT, my favs.
Monster Of The Week
- (Liam sings lead)
- Was missing touring at the time, but also cognisant of what a lonely asshole touring can sometimes make me become, but also I don’t mind being a lonely asshole sometimes, but also I should feel bad about that, but also…(continue circuitous thoughts)
- The Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard was a staple of my childhood. We used to make prank calls and just use the Arnold board. My favourite ones are “I’m a cop you idiot, a fucking cop” and “who is your daddy and what does he do?” but they were too hard to work into a song
- We both almost passed out doing the long drawn out aaaahhhh harmonies
- Usually I get mad at myself for not letting the outros of songs ride out for long enough but I think we got it right this time
As The Dogs Were Playing
- (Stefan sings lead)
- My first dog song on the record. I actually don’t really care for dogs, but I think they make great metaphors for people.
- It’s about dealing with a friend who does something shitty, and the decision to either broach that or shy away from it, I won’t go into specifics though, sorry!
- Some classic moments in this song that make me like it - the loud guitars that hit really out of tune in the second chorus, the white noise hits and the harmonised ‘mmm-mmm-mmm’
The Worm Turns
- (Liam sings lead)
- The musical idea for this song dates back a few years to one summer’s day where we tried to make our own version of Mort Garson’s Plantasia (to no avail). We ended up using it to fill space at the end of the Basketball Breakups cassette but I’d always liked the chords and feel to it so we dug it up and fleshed it out
- Lyrically it seems to be about not feeling comfortable being in a band or being an artist or whatever, and flogging a product that you’re not sure you care about anymore
- One of my many slow creeping wall of arpeggiators and LFO songs
Dog Years
- (Liam sings lead)
- First song I have written under the influence of marijuana in several years, and probably the last for several more
- Liz Phair graciously allowed us to use some lyrics from Fuck and Run for the end of the song. Thanks Liz Phair!
- It’s about all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in talking about publicly, sorry
- It kinda sounds like Bruce Springsteen if he made evil clown synth pop?
- It’s heavily informed by two pieces of kit that we had picked up for our studio: an E-Bow, and a UDO Super 6 Synthesiser
Queen Of Comedy
- (Stefan sings lead)
- Written while living with an ex during a period of fairly heavy alcoholism.
- Features a string quartet made up of Chloe Sanger (violin, arrangement), Lucy Rash (violin), Jenny Thomas (viola) & Kiya Van Der Linden-Kian (cello)
- The guitar playing was very informed by Blake Mills’ Mutable Set
- When working on the string arrangement, I asked Chloe to make it sound like a less French version of Serge Gainsbourg’s Melody
- While the first few lines may seem like it, it is not a song about having a god complex
- Here’s a video of us recording the quartet take that ended up on the record:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WlWjW8bOcTpBL1oGdkhFEQJ66kVstMHZ?usp=sharing
The Lake
- (Liam sings lead)
- This one always freaks me out a little bit cause I’m mad pitchy on it and the voice is so upfront, but listening to it while writing this I’m coming around
- A lot of the instruments on it are either recorded in the bathroom or re-amped through speakers in the kitchen. It was a really sunny day so we had all the doors open in the studio to let some air in, so you can hear sirens, birds etc.
- It’s about the foolish pride of arrogance, and getting addicted to digging holes for yourself
- I think I do have some kind of facial blindness which can often make for an awkward time with people I don’t know too well, but sometimes I wonder if I’m just disinterested in other people
- Always wanted to work the phrase red-misted into a song
Diane Said
- (Stefan sings lead)
- Written when I was living in the countryside and felt like I should be making ‘porch music’. It was probably the longest stint I’d had in my adult life living somewhere, and being home all the time. The house I was living in required 2 fireplaces to keep it warm, so my days were mostly spent chopping wood in the forest, and cooking meals. In a way this song is a celebration of domesticity, appreciating the minutiae of your days when they are one and the same for an extended period of time.
- Dad rips some wild sax on this one which always makes me laugh
- We recorded drums and guitar live to 4-track cassette originally which is why it sounds kinda small. I really like the middle section with the guitar solo. That sorta interplay of minimal acoustic arrangement with synthesiser placed on top was definitely a favoured palette on this record.
One Night
- (Liam sings lead)
- I was doing a writing exercise one week where my boyfriend would pick a record out at home and give it to me to take to the studio and incorporate into a song. I can’t remember the record this day but I sampled some vocals and dropped them in the ‘chorus’ part of the song. I ended up removing the sample cause I didn’t like it anymore but never figure out anything I liked that could replace them, so now the ‘chorus’ doesn’t have any words (although it does have a lot of voices)
- Lots of the pianos on the song are recorded an octave down at half tape speed then pitched back up. It gives them a spectral, resonant quality that I’m quite fond of
- It ended up fairly maximalist, but I always liked muting everything on the desk and just having the mandolin, harmonica, acoustic guitar and whistling in the chorus. Kind of an Italian film score version of it
- Not super sure what the lyrics are about, but I’m pretty sure it’s about dreams; both the wiggy ones during sleep and the aspirational ones during the day
- The ‘yet another show about the Cold War’ is almost certainly The Americans, which I watched a season and a half of. Good reminder to go back and finish it maybe?
Excalibur
- (Liam sings lead)
- When COVID happened (sorry to bring it up) we were on tour in the USA and had a night off in Las Vegas. We knew that shit was gonna go down soon and we were most likely gonna get pulled off the road but we were there when we made the call that we had to go home. Las Vegas is a strange and messed up place at the best of times, but when you feel like the world is gonna end it becomes even weirder. I remember walking around in the morning and the streets were pretty quiet and it was the day that the Killers put out that song Caution (Las Vegas banger). I listened to that on a loop and was looking at all these mock versions of world landmarks and just quietly freaking out about my future
- One night in the studio we were recording a demo of this instrumental idea that I’d had kicking around for a minute. The words came tumbling out cause I wanted to put a vocal down. Not to go songwriter spiritualist mode but it was one of those weird times where I had all the words in my head ready to go without ever explicitly thinking about them
- Our friend Dylan Young was there that night and came up with the ‘over and over again’ harmony idea and it totally makes the song. Thanks Dyl!
Real I’m Told
- (Stefan sings lead)
- Written in late 2020. I was living in a small town about an hour outside of Melbourne, and going through a pretty rough patch. I was drinking quite a bit and making some poor decisions that were definitely affecting the people around me.
- It’s about contending with the idea that if I consider myself a decent person who strives to do good things for myself and the people around me, how could I keep behaving in a way that was kind of heartless and irresponsible?
Just In Time
- (Liam sings lead)
- We made a record with our friends Lachlan Denton & Emma Russack while we were making this record, and Lachlan had a song on it that he joked could be on a millennial health insurance commercial. I already had this song and liked it but was freaked out about making something quite so bright and cheerful sounding, but having really liked Lachlan’s song I realised I had to commit to it
- In all actuality it’s really not a very happy. It seems to me that it’s about trying to muster up the hope that one day you’ll make it out of the shitty situation that you’ve found yourself in, and desperately searching for some self belief
- The ending of the song came together during final overdubs at Stella Mozgawa’s studio in Joshua Tree, CA. Without her big stack of synths at the ready it wouldn’t have ended up working quite as well
- The vocals are formant shifted up in an attempt to add more lightness to the song. Haven’t attempted to sing it live yet so lets roll the dice on that one I guess
Toy
- (Stefan sings lead)
This one I wrote in a park near my house in Carlton. I was listening to a Chet Baker and strings record, on which he does a version of Irvin Graham’s ‘You Better Go Now’, which we wound up interpolating at the top of the song. After hearing the string section that begins the song I paused it immediately because I could hear what became ‘Toy’ in my head. I hurried home and demoed the song pretty quickly, nervous that I would forget what I had imagined in the park. Don’t think something like that has ever happened to me before, but its cool it can.
As mentioned before the song contains an interpolation of Irvin Grahams ‘You Better Go Now’ which his granddaughter(?) graciously let us use, thanks Irvin’s granddaughter!
It’s about a very specific encounter I had at the pub in which I probably shoulda just left
Jelly Legs
- (Liam sings lead)
- At various points during the making of the record I had a job in an office that I would occasionally get called back to. I’d been doing this job on and off since I was 18 and every time I went back I would feel like a child again. This song is about feeling like you’ve never grown up
- The bits with the bass and keyboards joining in feel super aquatic, if that makes sense. I always think about the underwater levels of video games when I hear it
Dogs On The Beach
- (Stefan sings lead)
- When we were assembling the studio we made this record in, I was trawling the internet for cheap equipment that might help us slightly up our recording game. I’d found this preamp I was looking for for a good price, to be picked up down on the mornington peninsula. I was in contact with the person selling it and agreed to transfer them 100 bucks or so to show I was serious about picking it up the week after. When me and my girlfriend at the time drove down a few days later we arrived at an old lady’s house who was very confused as to why people kept showing up to her house looking for said scammer. We left and went to the beach nearby where I was sad and embarrassed that I’d been so easily scammed.
- The song was originally written sampling different parts of old orchestral recordings. Chloe Sanger then transposed them and we recorded it live with the string quartet.
The Fear!
- (Stefan sings lead)
- Probably the song I struggled with most on this record. Not to get too morbid but it’s kinda about convincing myself to stay alive, or rather a meditation on those creeping thoughts that might push you the other way.
- It’s full of funny sounds this one, which helped me find my way towards liking the song. The rhythmic element at the start is a drum sample processed through the ‘mouth-u-lator’ setting on our eventide. The bass guitar was played on an acoustic bass my parents bought for my brother when he took lessons in grade 3, an instrument I used to be repulsed by but now use all the time.
Liam’s Moodboard Playlist Made Before Recording
Erykah Badu - The Healer
The Rolling Stones - No Expectations
Joni Mitchell - Amelia
Daft Punk - Veridis Quo
Kraftwerk - Neon Lights
Kim Jung Mi - Haenim
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Extended Souvenir
Spiritualized - Cool Waves
Michael Hurley - Penguins
Sault - Masterpiece
Kevin Ayers - When Your Parents Go To Sleep
Pete Drake - Forever
Pastor T.L. Barrett - Nobody Knows
Against All Logic - This Old House Is All I Have
Pet Shop Boys - To Face The Truth
Leonard Cohen - Death Of A Ladies’ Man
The Blue Nile - The Downtown Lights
Not Waving - Hold On (feat. Marie Davidson)
Bill Evans Trio - Milestones
Flash And The Pan - Walking In The Rain
Perfume Genius - Describe
Coco & Clair Clair - Crushcrushcrush (feat. Paul Maxwell)
Alex G - Sugarhouse
Lana Del Rey - The Greatest
Paul McCartney - Jenny Wren
Dr. John - I Walk On Guilded Splinters
Frank Ocean - Provider
Sam Gendel - Sometimes I Feel So Good
Tyler, The Creator - New Magic Wan
Big Star - Kanga Roo