Singled Out: Wings Denied's Saudade

Washington, D.C. rockers Wings Denied just released their new album "Just The Basics," and to celebrate we asked guitarist Zach Dresher to tell us about the song "Saudade". Here is the story: Unlike some Wings Denied songs that have come together as quickly as in an afternoon, Saudade took almost five years. I first wrote what would become the intro melody and verse riffs around the same time that we had finished recording Voyager in 2015; I had been playing around with the idea of a bouncy triplet melody that ended short of a full measure, allowing it to turn around on the offbeat and make a simple groove more interesting. Outside of that section though, nothing else fit the mood I was going for, and it sat as an unfinished Guitar Pro file for ages, until one night maybe two years later when I wrote the chord progression that would ultimately lead the entire middle section of the song.

I listen to a lot of post rock, and I had bought a used Spector 5 string bass on craigslist around that time, and I really wanted to create a section entirely led by a bass groove that built up over several repetitions. The original demos for that section of Saudade were entirely different, though the groove remained unchanged, the drums were originally a lot busier and I had originally intended it to be a big instrumental break with no vocals until the distorted guitars came back in.

But then the question arose; even though these parts clearly have the same feel, they're at entirely different tempos and didn't mesh at all. Enter; the post-chorus groove, which again came about 6 months later. Prog nerd that I am, I love bands like Intronaut and Sikth and the way they mess around with metric modulation. The goal with that part was to write something that carried a groove, but worked in both tempos, where the only thing that actually changed is where the drums focused the beat. This gave me the bookends for each section, and finally allowed me to put together the ideas for the chorus (which actually contains the same chord progression as the beginning of the clean section). Finally, about 3 years later, I had something ready to demo.

So I demoed it, and the lyric and revision process began. Suddenly, it became clear this hit the same notes (literally, it's in the same key) as Six Years and a Day, and the vocals needed to be much more prominent if they were going to continue that story. We all live in different places, so all of this took place online. Once we got together in a room to work on it, we cut a ton out- the original version was about 6.5 minutes, with two more repeats of the post-chorus, and a longer middle. But with lyrics, it made more sense to cut it down to only the essential parts, ultimately making a better song.

In the studio, the one goal was to make that song as epic as possible; this is where the choirs and violin came in, they were both ideas that our producer Joel Hamilton suggested that we felt really added to the climactic feel of that middle into the ending, and helped it stand on its own against bands of similar styles. Luka (vocals) and Alec (drums, backing vocals) wrote the grand majority of the lyrics, and we were editing them literally up to and as we were recording the song, just trying to find the perfect words to capture the despair and pain felt by the character of our story. It's loosely based on a distant family member of Luka's experiences in World War II, and we felt it was an incredibly powerful story to tell- that of love, loss, and the impact of senseless violence on those waiting at home for their loved ones to return.

Saudade is one of my personal favorites off this new record, and I can't wait to begin playing it live. The parts are interesting, but not so complex that I have to focus so intensely on what I'm playing that I can't move around and rock out to it. I feel like it connects with us all individually, and has a bit of something for everyone; a heartfelt story, a melodic center, and some incredibly sick riffs!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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