Hey Our Basement,

I started work on A Colourful Headache immediately after the release of my previous EP, Midnight Sun. I was feeling frustrated – even though I liked the EP, I felt as if it failed to capture the musical direction that I wanted to go in. I wanted to create weird pop music rather than somber folk music.

Musically, I’ve always loved when a bunch of melodies collide in pleasant ways. With “Everything Nearly Fell Apart Completely,” the record’s first single, I wanted to make a song where various melodies introduced throughout play simultaneously at the end. The synth break emits the feeling that the song is about to fall apart, while the collision of melodies and lyrics that follow tie it all back together.

I wrote this song from the perspective of a person experiencing an absurdly over the top reaction to something left entirely unspecified. I think excessive emotional responses can often cause you to forget why you’re feeling the way you feel in the first place, so the lyrics really focus on the effect rather than the cause.

A Colourful Headache’s bass and drums were tracked live by my drummer, Colin McNally, and myself at The Root Down in Toronto, while Omar Shabbar handled the electric guitar. I did everything else in my bedroom, aside from vocals which were tackled over several 3 AM sessions at The Root Down. Once all the parts were tracked, I mixed and remixed (what feels like a million times over) until it felt right.

Fun fact: this song was once almost seven minutes with an extended over the top synth solo and even more melodies piling on top of each other at the end. Editing is the true hero here!

Dante Matas