We’re nosy little blighters. When a band does something new, we want to know all about it. Not just the stuff they put in their carefully polished press releases and official bios, either – the meaty stuff. That’s why we’ve pinned down Set It Off vocalist Cody Carson to tell us about his band’s new record.
1. This is the first album we’ve ever had a Gospel Choir featured on a song. Since the inception of Set It Off I have always dreamed of having a gospel choir sing on one of our tracks. I grew up listening to Kirk Franklin and always gravitated towards songs that featured one (‘I Believe I Can Fly’, ‘Unwritten’, ‘Man In The Mirror’, and ‘Pendulum’ to name a few). We finally wrote the perfect song, and it’s called ‘Happy All The Time’. It’s about living in your sadness and knowing that if you feel this sad right now, that you felt something really great before and it’s fine to not be happy all the time.
2. It took me seven years, but I was finally able to write another song for my father who passed away due to cancer in 2008. It’s a very special song to me on the sense that it’s a unique concept and honours him and anyone we may have lost that we loved in our lifetime in a fond way. It’s called ‘Unopened Windows’, and it’s about the inevitable reflection on memories that you didn’t get the chance to make, and how it’s almost like watching them happen through a closed window from inside a house, you can’t leave at the moment. It also features another nod to the ancient Irish Ballad ‘Danny Boy’ which is played on my father’s trumpet by Dan and doubled by myself on clarinet.
3. The reality of time is woven throughout the album. Midnight is a very special time, it signifies change, where we turn the page of today into tomorrow, and where yesterday is left behind. Midnight is also a very strange time, where I personally struggle to sleep and lay away with all of these loud conflicting thoughts in my heads that I battle away just to fight again the next time the clock hits 12. It represents a shift and an opportunity to seize every second to make the most of the new day in front of you. Every hour, second, minute, millisecond counts and Midnight means everything to us.
4. This album features two guest instrumentalists and a guest vocalist. Sky Acord (Issues) performed bass guitar on ‘Happy All The Time’, Matt Appleton (Reel Big Fish) preformed a sax solo on ‘I Want You (Gone)’, and Wayfarers lent her amazing vocals on the track ‘Go To Bed Angry’. We can’t wait for you to hear what they added to these tracks because they are just phenomenal.
5. This is the longest record we’ve ever released. Usually there’s some sense of social pressure to release a 10-12 album track, and we almost felt it necessary to narrow it down to that number, but to be honest, we just couldn’t. We went in with over 60 song ideas (our most amount ever), and we had to narrow that down, it wasn’t easy by any means, but in volume, there’s quality. We are beyond confident in each and every one of these 15 songs.
6. Struggle breeds creativity. I wear this index finger ring and on the inside of it theirs an engraving: ‘Struggle. Succeed.’. I live by those words. Last November I was in a very dark place. I felt unwanted, unloved and honestly contemplated quitting, I’ve never been there before. But in our darkest moments are when we need to fight the hardest. This album is a product of that. It’s raw grit and emotion, it’s for the love of music, and we couldn’t have done it without our new team behind us. Welcome to the new era of Set It Off, we’re just getting started.
Taken from the February issue of Upset. Set It Off’s album ‘Midnight’ is out now.
