One of my favorite scenes in the movie "Fight Club" is when narrator Jack "meets" Tyler Durden on an airplane. Jack explains his concept of the single-serving friend - that anonymous person you chat with while traveling that you know you'll never see ever person again - and Tyler responds, "That's clever. How's that working out for you?"

Jack is puzzled. "What?"

"Being clever."

"Hats Off" is an empty salute to all those dedicated to perpetually showing off how clever they are - including myself. And how easy the Internet has made this! The social mediascape has awakened our inner self-righteous trolls, and they have run rampant to little effect other than making us all look like a bunch of a**holes. The acrimony festering on the Internet is seeping into all parts of life, to all of our chagrin.
But rather than lecturing on the death of discourse, the chorus uses the most pithy of snark - "Hats off to you, mighty dragon slayer" - to admit that I'm part of the problem. This song is akin to me asking myself (pseudo-spoiler?), "How is being so clever working out for you?" Just like Jack, not so great.

As for the music, I have a tendency to dive into the deep end of prog, employing crazy complex riffs, weird time signatures, unsettling key changes, you name it. But occasionally I ask myself, "Can I actually write a straightforward song? You know, one that's interesting, one that's catchy? And most important - something that doesn't sound condescending, as if I'm slumming or trying to reach a broader audience?"

I heard in my head a simple bass line, something like a 50s pop song, but with a more propulsive beat. I shared it with bass player Julie, who Julie-fied the line (brilliantly, if I may say so) by making it more complicated rhythmically yet also groovier. Drummer Nick immediately laid into driving beat that's deceptively intricate. So I let the chorus chords flow right out of me, not giving much thought to whether they resembled some other song (I'm sure they do). "Hats off to you," came naturally to my lips.

Of course, we had to have a little bit of weirdness - it just wouldn't be us otherwise! We needed a transition from the second chorus to the guitar solo and nothing was landing. So randomly we thought, "What if we just do some noise over crazy drums?" Sigh, Justin and I are always up for making noise - it's a shared passion. And speaking of Justin, I quite enjoy trading guitar solos with him in the second half of the song, as self-indulgent as it may be. There's a lot of fun dueling guitars all over "Comfort in the Noise."