Breaking Down "Hello" Part 2.

Ayo!

Rumor has it that another track off of our "Hello" mixtape might be released tomorrow, so it seemed like a good time for another installment. I apologize for spotty-blogging as of late, but the computer is located in a part of my apartment without air conditioning. Which means that a paragraph in to this blog I am already pouring sweat. Indie-rap is nothing if not glamorous.

The song I will be discussing today is "Yellow Tape," our remixing of Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks."

Now, I think that everyone knows and loves this original song. Personally I can't get enough of dirty sounding keys and gorgeous, airy harmonies. This jawn's got both. Also, Grizzly Bears are a BK band. Represent, represent-sent.

They also made one of the most bizarre, off-putting videos of all time for this song. Dig, man. Diiiiiiig.



"Yellow Tape," I believe, was the second song we recorded for the mixtape. I remember when Matt originally sent over his first instrumental mix he felt the need to explain why he left it sort of off-kilter -- not everything lines up perfectly. Occasionally some snares hit a little off beat, and the piano-loop isn't quantized to some mathematically perfect time. I don't know why Matt felt the need to sell us on the instrumental. We luh us some mistakes. We try to leave them in as much as possible. And the instrumental sounded wonderful to me.

I mentioned in the last installment that just about every song Sentence and I have written in the last year has somewhere been about our struggles in the music bidness. This one is no different. I guess the difficult part for us is finding ways to write about the subject matter that is foremost in our mind without boring the shit out of anyone who happens to listen. Unless all of a sudden it gets cool for bands to whine about the fact that they aren't famous -- in which case, we could have a double-album ready by next week.

Sentence and I thought about how we ultimately felt like the beat-cops who have to hold the line outside of a crime scene. We are the face of Metermaids, the same way these cops are what is visible to anyone passing by. But there is so much going on behind the scenes that we cannot control, so many details we can't pin down. We want to know exactly what is happening. And we get asked the same questions by friends and by family. At the end of the day, much like the cop behind the yellow tape, we want to tell people "There's nothing to see here. Move along."

Was that last paragraph kind of pretentious sounding? It might have gotten away from me. It happens. I've also just sweat through my shirt.

So, that's the story behind "Yellow Tape." As the second single off the mixtape, it has had by far the most reach -- it hit #4 on Hype Machine (which I have mentioned ad nauseum at this point) and is the most listened to song the past three weeks on our Last.Fm by a long shot.

Check it out!



The mixtape is killing right now, incidentally -- I mentioned it on Facebook, but in its first week it was downloaded more than our Sufjan Stevens mash-up was in an entire year (and Nightlife in Illinoise got a TON OF DOWNLOADS). So we are excited, and thankful. In equal measures.

One more quick note: Matt Stine, our fearless leader, and Miss Elizabeth Weinberg (who's beautiful voice you can hear on many Metermaids songs) tied the knot this past Sunday, July 4th. It was an incredible occasion. One I'm still recovering from, truth be told. Ha. So much love to both of them.

Holler!