Emory Thorne - Wait on Me

The waves are rippling gently, disturbed by this small wooden boat. Emory squints into the horizon, holding a salute-shaped hand to his brow (to very little effect, the sun's brightness reflects from every direction off the glassy sea). Behind him, Tamuu pretends to not be dozing off while he is meant to be diligently fishing (their stomachs of course, depend upon the success of this endeavor). Emory remembers being here, somewhere unknown, swallowed by the expanse of the sea, at a different time. Isolated, stranded, weighed by the continuous erosion of hope and relentless physical emptiness. The sort of thing that is rigidly unchanging such that the severity of its impact increases exponentially over time. The sea does not care about you. It will feed you and eat you all the same. Today, thankfully, it is the latter. He playfully nudges Tamuu awake and rolls his eyes as the small creature frantically repositions, a poor attempt to hide the moments-ago dozing.

This is the first song that I have ever recorded as a single-mic full playthrough, i.e. the vocal and acoustic guitar were played simultaneously by me and recorded mono into my AKG (I only have one studio mic available at the moment, though there are maybe pros and cons to doing this versus dealing with phasing issues in the two-mic setup). It's also the first song that I made completely off the grid, as in, the Ableton grid (there is no "bpm" here, as I played the initial vocal/acoustic recording in "freehand," so to speak, which meant everything from that point on could not be set to the grid lest it be terribly out of time with the primary elements driving the heart of the song). My biggest focus was then on building the atmosphere. Emory in a boat, in the middle of the ocean. I think of the bass as a leviathan swimming beneath, the "underneath" phrasing production as from below the surface, other fun accoutrements as glowing flyfish and mermaid choral echoes and such types of fantastical bits and bobs.

speck on the map
no looking back for me
pale as a ghost
in seasick company
writing to toast
for a party I will miss

send me your love
save me a seat
blow me a kiss

wait on me
I’ve been keeping pace
but now it’s harder to breathe, so
wait on me
I’ve been taking waves
that pull me into the sea, so
wait on me

as I look up from underneath
waiting on
relief

claws in the grooves
of a floating log adrift
starving for news
of the hangars on the cliff
counting the days
by moons that pass to mourn

send me your love
blow me a kiss
save me a seat

and wait on me
I’ve been keeping pace
but now it’s harder to breathe, so
wait on me
I’ve been taking waves
that pull me into the sea, so
wait on me

as I look up from underneath
waiting on
relief

Verses:

G, D, C, G

I played the G as 320033 and D as 200232, so the line walk into D that you hear in these spots is:

low E string 3
A string open
A string 2
thumb on low E string 2 (into the D shape)

Choruses:

C, D, Em, Am

The D shape in the choruses is:

554030 (C shape moved up, some kind of D chord)

At the end of each chorus, on “waiting on” through “relief,” it goes:

C, D, then stays on the D before resolving to G major on “relief”

Chord shapes:

G: 320033
D: 200232
C: x32010
Em: 022000
Am: x02210
D (chorus voicing): 554030