Firestorm In Evening (single release)

We're back with another song after what feels like an extremely productive few months. I wrote a bit about it on the Waxlimbs website, but thought to write something more personal here. This single is the first from our upcoming (and as of yet untitled) album.

Firestorm In Evening is one of those "a-ha" songs, where the idea kind of emerged all at once. I was playing this oscillating guitar pattern where the bass moves from major to minor and back, and the sudden desire to record a lyrical idea grabbed me:

Every night, I bury gold by the lake

Mounting storms of fire light what's at stake

"That's an odd image," I thought.

Within an hour I had the start of the song recorded as a demo and handed-off to the band.

We got pretty far into 2025 before Firestorm took final shape. In rehearsals, we knew we needed a proper B-section and during a spontaneous jam one evening, the section materialized. I remember having the others loop over some new languid chords while I furiously wrote on the whiteboard:

House of birds and goldenrod

In your name

and in the ashen waste of trees

is a trace

of the fire you brought

to the stage

there should have been more than this

The energy was electrifying when we put it all together as a group. I remember singing those lyrics and feeling the band build to a crescendo, knowing this was the missing piece of the puzzle. I remember getting emotional.

A lot of time was spent iterating on the ending. I had a heavy "prog-metal-esque" riff we were playing, but it didn't feel like we had earned a heavy section like that, yet. Waxlimbs had been in a jamming phase for a while so it felt natural to write a breakdown to bridge the gap in that way. The process was new to us, and so, it excited us.

Eventually, we knew we had to wrap up production on this thing. A mad dash ensued to get Paul's drums recorded, followed by bass, piano, guitars, and vocals. It wasn't the most fun process as we'd performed the song live many times by this point, and felt like we had fully explored its musical world.

Despite that, a final studio session brought the excitement back. We always try to have an "ear candy" recording session at the end of production, to add in details that make the song feel like it's in a "world" of sorts. I wanted this song to feel mysterious, and particularly in the B-section I wanted it to feel like an enchanted, overgrown and mystical kind of space.

We added stylophone, percussion, hydrasynth layers over the ending, and tambourine which we ran through a granular sampler to create "sparkles". That last detail had me excited because it felt like fireflies hovering around the listener in the house of birds section.

And like that, it was done.

In retrospect, Firestorm feels like an odd choice for a single with its 6-minute runtime and unusual structure. We also took a chance on it by releasing on Bandcamp Friday, which is a weird time to release music for reasons better put by others. To be honest, I'm kind of numb after the release,^[1] and it feels as if the song still isn't out.

At this point in my life, releasing music feels more like an afterthought than the point. Other people get to hear it, yes, but more and more I feel like the process of writing the music is the only part of it that's truly important to me. As I age further into my 30s, the oscillations between creative peaks and valleys seem to get longer and deeper. I know this is just how it goes (especially under the strain of capitalism), but it always leaves me a little daunted by the machinery of it all.

And perhaps that's why this song happened in the first place. I was feeling crushed in the face of things just continuing to get worse for people like me, and I was mourning the death of a friend. This song is so much about the painful pressure of the space between an impending disaster and the loss of those in the past. My friend died nearly three years ago, but it still feels like something that I'm unable to move through. Perhaps it's because we hadn't spoken in a while, or perhaps it's because it always felt like we'd make music together again when the time was right. I don't know. It's not over in my mind- I don't know if it ever really will be.