Summer's over
Autumnation, lyrical stuckness, the fruit, and more...
Good afternoon friends,
With daylight savings time fast approaching, we really have hit hibernation season. I’ve been feeling the brisk fall air with mostly relief and excitement, as the leaves change over, and the angle of the sun makes a slightly different dance through my window every morning. This week I took some early morning walks that made the shorter days feel a bit longer, and I’m trying to make a habit of getting outside every morning.
The first song of my new album Atomic Force is called “Veggies (Summer’s over)” and I wrote most of it in Fall 2023. It was a particularly fruitful (no pun intended) time for me songwriting-wise. I was coming off of a 2-week stint of daily songwriting with some School of Song pals and participating in generative poetry workshops (shout out Emotional Historians!) where I was drafting new songs within 30 minutes on a weekly basis. “Veggies” is a song about plants, and how marvelously hardcore they are, from fruit to leaf to root. It’s also about seasons, transforming in response to change, and taking advantage of new circumstances.
Recording this song was harder than others! On June 2, 2024, Harrison, Lilith, Mert, and I gathered for the very first session of album recording and captured the live rhythm section for 4 songs: “Veggies,” “Cleveland,” “Paula’s gone,” and “Dancing.” The plan was to record the band live and then for Harrison and me to work one-on-one overdubbing guitars, layering vocals, and embellishing. The other three recordings came along, while Veggies haunted me for months. I had written verses but they didn’t feel finished. I didn’t know how to approach recording a song that wasn’t “done” yet and I didn’t know what I wanted the finished version to sound like.
Later in 2024, I took some songwriting lessons with El Kempner of Palehound, whose lyrics and music have spoken deeply to me since I first heard their song “Aaron” while walking home from work in 2021. El encouraged me to dig deeper into the chorus, which at that point was just the repeated refrain of “summer’s over.” Biking home from my lesson through the early winter chill, I sang to myself, experimenting. I tried pushing the refrain up an octave and humming lower melodies in between. The back and forth between me and the plants (as I imagined the backing vocals representing) was compelling. When I got home, I wrote down the only line I liked that rhymed with “summer’s over” — “saving my luck in a 4-leaf clover”.
Early 2025 Harrison and I revisited “Veggies,” and when we did, it was a turning point for me. Until that session, each song was a complete mystery to me, which was exciting (creatively) but exhausting (mentally). When you’re staring indecisively down infinite paths, it’s hard to stay motivated enough to reach the finish line on any one of them. But I think when we reached “Veggies,” we had already built an auditory world for this album, with a few fleshed-out instrumental characters to choose from. In addition to our musical inspirations, we were able to start referencing our own work while we laid out riffs and adjusted guitar tones. Within that one day we had turned “Veggies” around from a vocal-less track of drums, bass, and scratch guitar into the foundation of something I was excited about.
Even as we settled into the arrangement of the track, I was still toying around with the words. Despite being one of the first songs we started recording, it was the last song to have finalized lyrics. I even brought Harrison into the lyrical workshop, which was really new for me as a comfortably solitary songwriter. (Message to songwriter friends: experiments in cowriting is a new musical priority of mine!!) Eventually, we arrived at some lyrics that sounded cool and felt right. The final step was what Harrison and I came to call “Autumnation” — a.k.a. getting Autumn Swiers’ delightful backing vocals on those chorus moments. Autumn is a lovely human being, incredibly talented writer, and dear friend whose voice can also be found on “Cleveland,” “Jenny,” and “Strong Force.”
In the end, “Veggies” became the opening track of the album, my first and last puzzle of Atomic Force! You can listen to it on Bandcamp, and soon enough on all streaming platforms except Spotify!!!
Happy Autumn (Summer’s over) <3
-Zoe Firn
p.s. My favorite lyrics from “Veggies (Summer’s over”) are in verse 3:
the root was made to hold / the root was made to hold / deeper in the cold / the root was made to hold / the insects, the tall grass / your feet on a long path / awaiting a smile / the sugars of survival
p.p.s. I am nearing my goal of 100 mailing list subscribers! Please tell a friend who might want to read along :)
Next mailing list song story: Cleveland!