Fischerspooner's "Odyssey" Track by Track

Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer

Today, Fischerspooner's second album "Odyssey" was formally announced by Capitol Records. The record will hit stores in the U.S. on April 5. The press release includes a comprehensive track by track listing with commentary by the band:

"JUST LET GO"
The propulsive lead single picks up neatly where #1 left off and notably features psychedelic-sounding percussion instrument the Vibraslap, made famous by Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower." The vocals, in contrast to most other tracks, were written and recorded on the spot in one day, an apt reflection of the lyrical idea.  Casey explains: "This song is about battles -- battles between the mental and the physical, between the rational and the intuitive, between mortality and greatness, timelessness and relevance."

"CLOUD"
Casey: "The ideas of the Romantics became a huge influence on the album because they were basically the roots of rock 'n' roll. The Romantic Hero led directly to the modern idea of a rock star.  'Cloud' relates to that as the a tale of a mad, obsessive genius who gets so caught up in his creation that he completely loses himself in it."

Co-produced by Mirwais, the track was based on a song idea by NY artist Jon Wolfington and influenced heavily by Warren's love of the Cure's unique chorus/post chorus song structures.

"NEVER WIN"
Co-produced with Mirwais and the last song written for the record. Warren: "There was this moment around 1980 where disco and rock intersected and produced songs like Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall' and AC/DC's 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.'  This was our tribute to that era of danceable hard rock."

Casey: "Creative tensions were at their peak when we wrote this song, and the lyrics are the most personal on the record - written about frustration in general but more directly about the struggles between us."

"A KICK IN THE TEETH"
Casey found the chorus lyrics in a randomly-worded spam email that he happened to see while in the grips of some teeth-grinding personal anxiety making the record.

With some melodic input from Linda Perry and production touches from Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air, The Thrills), the lush vocal approach was influenced by Steve Miller and Pink Floyd.  That superhuman sound is the product of nine extremely soft vocal tracks of Casey and longtime backing singer Lizzy Yoder layered together.

"EVERYTHING TO GAIN"
The first song to be written for the album and a turning point in Warren's writing when he found a touchstone for the album's production - marrying the orchestral Mellotron rock of the Moody Blues with Stooges-like proto-punk.

Lyrics inspired again by an especially well-crafted spam email advertising a diet pill, remarkable in its sheer crassness.  Casey: "Spam is definitely a link to the new collective unconscious - it's a constant, resonant low-grade input of subliminal messages."

"WE NEED A WAR"
With lyrics by the late Susan Sontag, the song they inspired finds Casey portraying a wistful warmonger while Fischer's music builds to its ferocious crescendo.  Warren's production approach began as an experiment to see what the busy percussion of "Sympathy for the Devil" would sound like recreated digitally.

"WEDNESDAY"
This psychedelic, digital rock jam is sonically most indebted to the more hypnotic end of goth ala Bauhaus, with Warren's lyrics about being unable to escape a bad cycle in your life.

"HAPPY"
Casey: "This is about my relationship with New York City, a place that has come to define me.  It's a fickle beast that can take you to the heights of greatness or the depths of dispair, both tragic and exhilarating.  We had several different versions of the song but the final album cut was finished with some help from Linda Perry who also makes a vocal cameo."

"RITZ 107"
Another early track that set the album's sonic tone, Warren is attempting here to update Simon and Garfunkel's mellow, intimate seventies sound with some goth atmosphere.

Lyrically based on Casey's stay at the Ritz Paris, room #107, on his birthday.  That night he kept waking from a recurring dream of being in a field with his father to a 'light white spinning noise' in his ear. The second verse is Casey telling the ghostly visitor to leave him alone.

"ALL WE ARE"
Musically the most acoustic track on the record, Warren was trying to make a slow burning, timeless rock anthem via Philip Glass's style of repeated minimal patterns.  To that end he traveled to L.A. to record the musicians with Tony Hoffer and Nicolas Vernhes at the legendary Sunset Sound Studios.

The song was the beginnings of the Linda Perry collaborations - she took the unfinished instrumental and added melodic ideas, which Casey made his own with new musical touches and lyrics inspired by images of light, creation and the collective unconscious

"CIRCLE (VISION CREATION NEW SUN)"
A blistering cover of "(Circle)" from the "Vision Creation New Sun" EP by Japanese noise merchants Boredoms.

Warren: "There was something spectacularly beautiful about that album's aggressiveness.  It was the first time I heard dissonance and clutter in this beautiful transcendental way.  I just heard this version in my head and programmed it in a day.  We included it on the record because it reminded us of the ideas we were exploring about the occult and spirituality."