All I Want
“Most of my songs are Post-Its. Even “All I Want,” if you look at the verse, it’s very much about how fleeting any kind of epiphany is. It’s all about the moment passing very, very quickly and how there’s a desire to hold onto it. That would be a constant, but it comes and it goes and it goes very quickly.”Glen Phillips (456)
Golden Age
“We realized just last week that three of us are married and we’re still married to our first wives who we all married in our early 20s, which statistically should not happen in a rock band. Our divorce rate is very low for rock & roll. It’s nonexistent. But people think of marriage and relationships as this destination, and it’s definitely a process. “Golden Age” is about this tendency to look back and idealize this task that never actually happened, or idealize a future that will never happen and lose the present. To some degree the song is definitely about depression and just trying to face that. I’m trying to talk more publicly about it because enough people have gone through it or have lived with somebody who’s gone through it.”Glen Phillips (456)
New Constellation
“”New Constellation” is a bit of a mishmash, actually, for all I’m talking about trying to write so directly. It’s a very devotional chorus; I just kept this image of writing someone’s name in a new constellation, like this large act of celestial-level love. And once again, the darkness comes into it, too. There’s a bridge in the song which is about how there is a kind of madness in the arts, and if you look at patron saints somehow they understood that there was a tie-in there – there’s actually a lot of crossover. I spent a lot of time Googling all the scenes. [Saints mentioned in the bridge include St. Dymphna, St. Cecilia and St. Margaret – Ed]. But the key to that song is awareness, devotion, gratitude. A fairly recurrent theme throughout the record.”Glen Phillips (456)