Zero Visibility

Finding out the meaning behind a song lyric can often times throw the listener - for me, I always think I know what a song is saying only to find out I was way off course. This is the great thing about releasing music like this, bit by bit, I can take the time to tell the story and allow you to find additional meaning from what you already know. It's always been my favourite part of playing live, talking about where the song came from, what triggered it in the first place. This one has a pretty good tale behind it (...well I think so), which I know wouldn't be immediately obvious from scanning the lyric sheet.

In late 2012 I released an album called 'Regret Less' and then spent the next 6 months touring, on my own for the most part, pretty relentlessly. In April 2013 I arrived in the US for a month of gigs and promotion. As with all tours, some shows are better than others, and my New York gig was one of the others. I was booked to play a small club in Brooklyn on a night that turned out to be the rainiest of the year - the result being a smaller crowd than expected, bad sound (nothing to do with the rain), and me getting frustrated. I ended up getting pretty drunk with a friend after I played, and felt an odd mixture of glow and grump as I left the venue just before midnight. I was staying in a hotel on the Lower East Side and, in my slightly boozed state, decided to walk home in the drizzle.

Now, the Brooklyn Bridge is LONG so there was plenty of time for deep thought and soul searching on the walk. The view of Manhattan from the bridge is something pretty rare and wonderful, and I kept on spying the Empire State Building winking at me as I trudged along. I'd been told on a previous visit to NYC that the observation deck of the Empire State Building is open til 2am, so by the time I got back to my hotel I'd decided to do the most touristy thing you can do when half cut in the Big Apple at 1am. I bought a ticket online, jumped in a cab and got there only to be told that a) there was 'zero visibility' from the top tonight (too cloudy and wet) and b) my $50 ticket was non-refundable. Refusing to be beaten by American weather I went up anyway, sharing an elevator with some other drunk English idiots obviously feeling the same level of elemental invincibility.

It turns out zero visibility has no wiggle room; it was a thick, noisy wall of cloud, full of hints at life below - the sound of traffic, shouting, laughing - but apparently endless. I stood up there for 30 minutes chatting to an attendant ("It's a shame you didn't bring your girl up here, you could have made it on top of the Empire State Building...I wouldn't have told anyone"), and listening to the city hum and buzz. At around 1:45am the cloud cleared slightly and I could just see the tops of neighbouring buildings and the still busy street below. I cant quite explain it, but in that really brief moment I felt totally elated. My view was so limited but even a snatch of it's massiveness was enough. It was the best big nothing I've ever seen.

Production wise, we were definitely inspired by 'Plans' era Death Cab For Cutie." -Richard Walters