Singled Out: All The Right Moves

Choke is one of those songs that almost didn't make it to the album... but then ironically ended up becoming the single off the album. It was the night before the band was planning to depart Minneapolis to drive out to New Jersey and begin recording our new full-length album, "When Your Compass Breaks" with platinum producer Rob Freeman (Hit The Lights/ Cobra Starship/ Gym Class Heroes). I had been working on demos for two weeks straight, toying around with different song ideas on Reason & Pro Tools. I was running out of ideas, energy and beer by 5am that morning but I was determined to write another song before we left. I was lying on the ground of my practice space, drunk, frustrated and nearly asleep and then suddenly a melody came rocketing into my head out of nowhere that sparked me up like the 4th of July. I heard the chorus line "Your heart's as big as the ocean, darling, Your soul's as deep as the sea, and it's drowning me". The lyrics, the melody; It all kind of came at once. I think it's the fastest I've ever written and recorded a song. I tracked piano first, then guitar, bass, vocals, and MIDI violin in two hours time and I stayed up until 8am chugging coffee and saw the sunrise that morning as I was finishing mixing the demo tracks to "Choke". I remember being so amped about the song when I met up with the rest of the band the next day I immediately put the song on the stereo of the van for the rest of the band to hear.. It had one of the catchiest choruses I feel like our band has ever released. When we got to the studio and showed Rob Freeman all our song demos... he turned around during Choke and said, "Ok... This one HAS to go on the record!" Choke was the first song we recorded with Rob and it is the first single off our new album.

"Choke" is all about smothering someone you're totally infatuated with. So much to the point that the person you are chasing is "choking on the fumes" from the heat of it, causing them to run away in any direction, just to catch their breath. So to parallel the violent theme of the single, we decided to smash all of our music equipment with an axe and set an upright piano on fire in our music video to "Choke", which can be seen here.