affirmation

Darren and Daniel's Account of Affirmation
Affirmation:
Darren - I was walking around the Village in New York City, where there are always little graffiti statements. This one week, someone had written things in chalk on the sidewalk, and there was a line that read "beauty magazines promote low self-esteem." I thought about how cool it would be just to spew forth all of these things that I think about life. "Affirmation" pretty much sums up the whole record: It's quite positive, but it's also brutal and to the point. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. I wanted to be that literal.
Daniel - This song is like "I Want You" on an adrenaline rush. It's just a high-energy, big synth pop, positive-sounding kind of song. The instumental is so in the pocket for what Darren is trying to say: Life can be really damn good if you know how to play the game.

Hold Me:
Darren - This is a song about the moment where you're ready to give up the fight in a relationship. We don't understand why, but something's not working, even though we wish it could. We really love each other, but why do we keep doing this to each other. We're destroying one another, so maybe being together isn't the best thing for us. It's as if you no longer have any defences and you agree that things just can't be fixed. It's like a Rubix's cube, where you finally just give up, and that's OK.
Daniel - This was my least favourite song for a long time, sort of a four-chord musical thing that didn't turn me on that much. But once it was all put together with Darren's vocal, I went, "Wow."

I Knew I Loved You:
Darren - This love song is very simple. Nothing else on the record is as pure as this song, and I think it was really essential to include. When I wrote it, I wasn't feeling that way at the time, as opposed to "Truly Madly Deeply," which I was absolutely living and breathing. I was there. I didn't know if I could write this one without having that same feeling, but I did and it actually puts a lump in my throat.
Daniel - This song is beautiful with Darren's falsetto and the rise of acoustic guitars. It has a lot of innocence. It was important that we find that place on this album again.

The Best Thing:
Darren - This song represents my favourite kind of pop. There's this big keyboard riff, everything I was raised on musically. Lyrically, it's about those relationships that are really bad for you; they're crazy and they're obsessive, but they're like an addiction. The song is basically saying, it's probably going to kill me, but I love it and I just want to say what you mean to me. It also expresses fright that the person is becoming the best thing about you; about how sad it is that the best thing about you is someone else, but what the hell, it's fun.
Daniel - For me, this song was inspired by guitar pop with a very riffy bass. When we started working on this project, Darren and I used to jam with that riff, which really made us feel like a band again. That's the way we created that song, just trying different things with the riff, Darren's singing along, and myself trying different instruments.

Crash and Burn:
Darren - There are some pretty heavy places that this record goes, and I wanted this song to be something that says, look, everything is going to be OK; it always is in the end. It's like a lullaby to myself and for the people that listen to this record to see us through the dark moments.
Daniel - "Crash and Burn" is my favourite song on the album, and it's the last one we recorded. I love the angst feel of the guitars, quietly placed behind the rest of the sound. It's just a good feel-sorry-for-yourself kind of song.

Chained To You:
Darren - I love this song about obsessive love. It's very real and is exactely what it appears to be. There's a nightclub, there's a Madonna song playing on the dance floor, there's a kiss and it's all over. It's intentionally retro, with claps drums, a big '80s guitar solo and throbbing keyboards.
Daniel - We were thinking very '80s pop when we did the whole synth line and guitar thing you hear in this song. We wanted to make a statement with that. For a while, the song was sounding really ridiculous-totally cheesy-but after we added drums and sped it up a bit, it tended to rock more than crackle. It's a really fun song.