This series asks songwriters to describe their writing process, and what influences them. Here, F--ked Up guitarist and principal songwriter Mike Haliechuk.
We’ve started working on the new album, and right now we have 40 or 50 songs to choose from. It’s a little looser than David Comes to Life, which was riff after riff and very structured. What I can say for this sound is that it’s not as structured.
For the last two records, we had a bunch of previous stuff to work from, but on this one we didn’t have anything, so what we did was take a bunch of false starts, come up with a style, scrap a bunch of songs and eventually we just settled on something we liked.
Once we have a template, it’s just a matter of filling it in and making other songs that kind of sound similar. Writing music that way consolidates it a bit and makes it easier to do the same thing, but more, like 40 times more, instead of just once.
We usually just get together in the practice space and it will start from a guitar riff, because everyone plays guitar. We’ll take a riff and some very loose ideas of the song and with that make up the skeleton — the loose thing that holds it together. Everything else, all the fun guitar stuff, basslines, vocals, that all comes when we’re recording. We go into the studio with 20 per cent of the song and you put all the skin and clothes on it there.
I approach lyrics very systematically, the same way we write music. I don't consider myself a writer, so I’m not writing to express my opinions. It’s not like I’m doing it because I need to tell people how I feel about things; it’s more like the songs need to have words.
On Chemistry of Common Life, which I wrote half the lyrics to, I would just write from the different points of view of various things. “No Epiphany,” for example, was from the standpoint of the sun, and a bunch of the lyrics were about plants. I think I tried to write about stuff that no one would care about so that I wouldn’t have to sit there and explain them. I thought it was interesting, plus all the words rhymed.
Vocals and lyrics, those are like instruments for us. Damian [Abraham]’s voice is an instrument. With our kind of music, the vocals and the things being said are as much an instrument as the drums or the guitar. Lyrics are important in a certain way, but the way the lyrics sound are more important.
F--ked Up Presents Long Winter, a four-part monthly night of music and art, starts Nov. 9 at Toronto’s Great Hall. For more details visit TorontoLongWinter.com.
Previously in this series:
How I Write: David Usher
How I Write: Glen Hansard
How I Write: Norah Jones
How I Write: Cold Specks
How I Write: Tim Foreman
How I Write: the Civil Wars
How I Write: Dan Mangan
How I Write: Jim Bryson