‘Dope Calypso’ was one of those songs that came together from pieces of musical scrap. I was working on multiple guitar parts and lyrics as different songs and one morning out of frustration I mixed it into a melting pot and it magically glued together. I basically culminated the lyrics from taking scrap notes while walking to work in the morning. I remember Dean Turner (good friend and manager at the time) made a joke that skyscrapers are the “cathedrals of capitalism …trophy relics that represent man’s power over the world”. I love riffs that sound like they can destroy buildings, and I felt like this was one of them. The lyrics are a random mishmash of notes and reflections about identity and deserting normality. I have never written a song that naturally felt like a solid opener until this one – as soon as I wrote the riff I knew we could add 30 seconds of layered atmospheric sounds and bring the whole band in on a single snare hit – a lot of fun to play live!
Officially from the band:
‘Dope Calypso’ was one of those songs that came together from pieces of musical scrap. I was working on multiple guitar parts and lyrics as different songs and one morning out of frustration I mixed it into a melting pot and it magically glued together. I basically culminated the lyrics from taking scrap notes while walking to work in the morning. I remember Dean Turner (good friend and manager at the time) made a joke that skyscrapers are the “cathedrals of capitalism …trophy relics that represent man’s power over the world”. I love riffs that sound like they can destroy buildings, and I felt like this was one of them. The lyrics are a random mishmash of notes and reflections about identity and deserting normality. I have never written a song that naturally felt like a solid opener until this one – as soon as I wrote the riff I knew we could add 30 seconds of layered atmospheric sounds and bring the whole band in on a single snare hit – a lot of fun to play live!