by Tim Vesely

I wanted to put my thoughts on the climate crisis down as concisely and completely as possible in a song. I started with the phrase ‘keep it in the ground’ (of course). The first guitar idea that came was upbeat and high energy and blues-based with that ‘say it, repeat it, explain it’ format. It felt right. I wanted to make it listenable. So I employed my pop sensibility for the chorus. I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I don’t think of it as preachy. I think of it as me expressing myself as an individual, and then hopefully striking a chord with other people who are thinking along the same lines, and then creating a vibration that’s a little bigger than myself. A little bit hippie, but then again, I don’t know what else to do.

“Quiet This Morning” started the opposite way, with the music pretty much fully formed first. Lyrically, I ended up thinking along the same lines as “Keep It In The Ground,” but more from a post-apocalyptic perspective.

The main thought in both songs is how we have failed to appreciate how good we’ve had it, how fortunate we’ve been to have hit this sweet spot in which we’ve been able to thrive as a species. But it’s a precariously balanced sweet spot and there are physical limits to our thriving which is accelerating out of control. It’s time to take stock of all the variables and proceed with our very survival in mind. It’s just science. A cold, hard fact.