"TWO BY TWO is the eighth song on AN UNWAVERING BAND OF LIGHT. This song was created after drum tracking for the album had already been completed. Dan wanted to write a couple more songs to have in the running for final album track list selection, but we wrote within the parameters of not being able to record any more drum kit. As a result there’s a lot of pots and pans and slinky percussion. I always think of this song as a serpent, the same way I think about Joni Mitchell’s “The Jungle Line.”
I wrote the chorus lyrics first:
All you love commit to the ash
All you worked for gone in a flash
You can’t look forward while you’re looking back
…and originally worked on two sets of verses that each followed a different theme. Set 1 explored human volcano sacrifice, which has haunted me since I first saw it in an animated Garfield holiday special when I was 7 or 8. Set 2, which ultimately became the final lyrics, follows the grieving Orpheus down into Hades as he tries to recover the lost Eurydice.
When I was a kid my mom worked across the street from the county library and some days during summer break I’d just hang out there from 9 to 5, reading anything and everything. Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology got under my skin early and stayed for good. "
"TWO BY TWO is the eighth song on AN UNWAVERING BAND OF LIGHT. This song was created after drum tracking for the album had already been completed. Dan wanted to write a couple more songs to have in the running for final album track list selection, but we wrote within the parameters of not being able to record any more drum kit. As a result there’s a lot of pots and pans and slinky percussion. I always think of this song as a serpent, the same way I think about Joni Mitchell’s “The Jungle Line.”
I wrote the chorus lyrics first:
All you love commit to the ash All you worked for gone in a flash You can’t look forward while you’re looking back
…and originally worked on two sets of verses that each followed a different theme. Set 1 explored human volcano sacrifice, which has haunted me since I first saw it in an animated Garfield holiday special when I was 7 or 8. Set 2, which ultimately became the final lyrics, follows the grieving Orpheus down into Hades as he tries to recover the lost Eurydice.
When I was a kid my mom worked across the street from the county library and some days during summer break I’d just hang out there from 9 to 5, reading anything and everything. Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology got under my skin early and stayed for good. "
-Jenny Owen Youngs on "Two by Two"