hello and thank you for reading. today is about eternal ring, our first record that was released 1 year ago today. this entry is going to be a bit more free and flowy than they usually are so bare with me here, but here’s an eternal ring recap track by track. if you don’t already own the record, go purchase it at dangerbird’s webstore. we’ll be back with new music soon, but for today let’s get nostalgic.
1.) illuminate.
illuminate kicks off the record. this song was my first time singing like I do on the chorus - trying my best to scream. if you regularly listen to MILLY then you will know by now i’m pretty mellow from a vocal place, so this one was a true test for me. I wrote this song right when lockdown hit in 2020. I had just moved into a new house in a new area of town and the song to me is about the feeling of decorating your room and identifying with a space being yours. staying up all night chipping away at making your space feel more custom and a reflection of you, in posters and knick knacks ETC. I wanted this song so badly to sound like jimmy eat world and sunny day real estate, hawthorne heights and the used while have a failure type breakdown. i’m not really sure if any of that was achieved but it is one of the best MILLY songs in my opinion and playing it live never gets old, especially playing that guitar solo.
2.) sedation
sedation was a song I had laying around since 2017. if you know the MILLY song talking secret, it actually came as talking secret’s sibling song. it’s pretty much the same chords just backwards. I always like when bands or artists are self referential and this was my stab at it. this song had become a staple in our live set and we knew we had to do it on the record. the song used to just be the intro, the small vocal part, and an outro of the intro chords but in 2020 around the same time as illuminate, I reworked it to have the whole big chorus and new outro. I was probably listening to duster when I first wrote it but was trying to take some notes from bands like HUM and of course swervedriver who we had gotten off a US tour with and the really showed us how to crank the amps up and fuck around with some delay pedals. this song was originally about a friend that lost it in a lot of substances and took it way too far and my perspective on it as well as a view in their head.
3.) marcy
marcy in my opinion is the dopest song on eternal ring. the tuning I ripped off from Malkmus - the king. I wanted a pavement swing to the song but honestly at that time, everything I did ended up kinda having a slower feel cuz of all the red house painters I was listening to. the ending is totally a homage to that. this song means so much to me. I feel so tied to the words and how I was feeling when I wrote it.
4.) nullify
nullify came to be when I was lent a telecaster by a friend and I plugged it into my interface. I tuned the guitar to a tuning I ripped off from a LOW song and I swear that opening riff just came right out. I immediately had to track the demo. nullify was my attempt at making something anthemic and heartfelt. i wanted to feel like I was in Texas is the reason or sunny day real estate. I wanted to write something tongue in cheek. the song to me walks the line of being overdramatic and jokey while still wearing your heart on your sleeve. singing ‘there is a price to nullify me’ felt like the funniest thing.
5.)butterfly
butterfly was a song I wrote in the middle of 2020 when I was entering a new relationship. it’s about the tug and pull of feelings you have — i’m cool being friends or i’m cool taking this into something more serious. I really was feeling inspired by a song called dragonflies by red house painters. the chorus to me was inspired by DIIV’s deceiver album. I loved the vocal work on that record and a lot of the mellower choruses just felt so much bigger due to the vocal stacks and stuff.
6.) stuck in the middle
stuck in the middle is a jam I am so proud of and really hope that in the streaming era, some people are down to sit and let it unwind. I really wanted to capture the feeling of Neil young Cortez the killer and some pavement songs off brighten the corners that just go on and you let em jam. the drums and guitar were done together and we really played off each other in the right hand. I wanted it to feel kinda like guitar solo worship too. I wrote this song originally in 2017 and it was a time in my life where I was truly stuck in between a lot of different things. dead energy sucks. gotta rip a 9 minute song to deal with it. i don’t know many bands these days in our sphere putting a 9 min song on an album so I just wanted to do it - wanted to try and see how people responded.
7.) ring true
ring true was written when we had no clue how long it would be until we could go outside again. I just wanted to promise myself by the fall it would be alright. there’s links to my youth in this song, more so how patriotic growing up in Connecticut was. it was always something that sorta vibed me out. it’s so engrained in the culture there. I kinda wanted to call back to it in a funny way. when I made the demo, the Logic drummer started doing this funny swingy almost dance beat which is where that feel came from. I kinda wanted to sound like the smiths and death cab for cutie. just like watching videos of ben gibbard dancing and playing his guitar made me so hyped.
8.) the end
the end came from a voice memo I had found on my phone in 2020. the memo was from late 2018 and it was just me playing the 3 chords that start the song over and over and kinda singing random shit that I pulled apart and based the intro vocal on. during 2020 I was really struggling with the concept of death, and truly feeling the distance of being away from my family who live 3000 miles away from me. this song was sort of an ode and a matter of fact comment of coming to terms with death and loss and fear of it all for me.
9.) carousel
carousel I wrote in the summer of 2019. it was long awaited after it had probably been a year since i’d been able to write a song. I was dealing with the worst writers block of my life but finally cracked through one day when I had some alone time to craft. the theme to this song is pretty similar to the end, which is why I think eternal ring’s main theme would be what happens next after we die and trying to be alright with it. carousels are so pretty, I just wanted to close my eyes and sway while writing this song. the guitar solo is a highlight for me as a player. I think people sleep too hard on this one.
this post is fantastic. milly is a huge influence for me so getting to see the stories behind each track is spectacular! sedation is by far my favorite track on the album and it's pretty funny learning it by ear and realizing it's talking secret backwards.
anyways- you guys are awesome. a lot of love is out there for ya'll
Loved reading about the songs. I first heard Milly in 2020 during a long lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. Talking Secret got me so hyped to write songs. It was awesome to watch Milly grow and eventually release Eternal Ring, such a killer album :))