This is one of the few, rare sessions over the past one and a half years that I was unable to attend. I just so happened to be on a lake six hours from the studio, imaging what was going on back here the entire time we were fighting with wasps, taking to woodchip running trails, getting out on a pontoon boat and fattening up (even more) on home cooking in a vacation environment. It was likely – no, I’m certain it was absolutely nothing like the way it was in the studio, which was likely stuffy and humid on July 1st, Canada Day as it so fell. The rest of this introduction to the session will be a snapshot of pure fabrication and uncertainty. It will be what can be pieced together from the photographs that Phil clicked that afternoon. Lead singer Matt LeMay walked into the studio and lost his marbles. He was talking about our stash in the days leading up to the session – which wasn’t confirmed until the day before it was to happen. This was the last chance we had to have them in this year as they planned to retire back to Providence, Rhode Island after the tour. What can be discerned about the band’s precious couple of hours here – strictly from pictorial evidence and hearsay – is that there were many instruments and voice that took some time to dial in, but once it happened, the world was good, that much is true. Finally, LeMay wore a navy blue tee-shirt that featured a couple of seahorses, Kevin Sparks wore a plain brown tee, Jeff Wood wore a tee-shirt that featured a snappy design that’s hard to make out from a distance, Joe Posner wore a standard gray tee and Jason Sigal wore a yellow tee with the word “ALBUM” in all upper-case letters on its top (in the photos, we don’t know how the tee-shirt ends as the frame cuts off just below the nipples. They are tee-shirt lovers, these eaters and their keyboards were extremely happy this day, playing with a piece of Elvis Costello material and a new song. – Sean Moeller

First song
Get Down (Get Him Eat Him) [2.92MB] [1616 downloads]


– original version appears on Arms Down
I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about indie rock, and this song is kind of a coyly self-flagellating extension of that. The call-and-response bridge is kind of a thematic nod to the Dismemberment Plan song “Doing the Standing Still.” We got the idea for this song’s rhythm from an excellent Louisiana band called Frames of Reference. Jason’s guitar part in the verse is probably my favorite thing to listen to in any of our songs.

Second song
What We Do (Get Him Eat Him) [3.36MB] [1461 downloads]


– original version appears on Arms Down
This was the last song I wrote for Arms Down, and at the time I didn’t think we would ever play it live. We spent some time re-arranging it before we left for tour, and it actually turned out to be one of our favorite songs to play. Most of the song’s tension and dynamics are written into the parts themselves, so even when we’re in a situation where we don’t have a lot of control over the way we sound, I like to think that song still gets its point across.