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Marauder was our first truly solid song, written sometime in 2019. David wrote the whole thing (minus the piano solo) in one night, and barely tweaked it since then. It was our first song to use the piano, and our first to be in a time signature other than 4/4. It is by far the oldest song on our debut EP. This was the first song where we truly came into our sound and found a niche we all liked.
The original lyrics were (in our opinion) a lot edgier and worse, and we didn’t end up changing them for a long time due to laziness. We probably played our first few shows with the old lyrics. Cam Elgart from The Phets and Crush the Monster liked the old ones, actually. Thanks for your support, Cam. Go check out his bands, he’s an incredibly talented musician and a fantastic guy. The current lyrics are about the last person on Earth going into space. The song is meant to be pretty open-ended in its interpretation, but gives us all a general feeling of peace.
Originally, we talked about this song being the second track on the EP after Help Me Doctor!!. In the end, we agreed it needed to be the closer to the EP due to its more bombastic nature and how the story creates a fitting end for the concepts introduced throughout the rest of the tracks on the EP.
This was the first song that David originally sang lead vocals on. It also used to have a guitar riff to open it instead of that cool piano riff it has now. It was initially called Turn The Earth, and takes its current name from Interpol’s album of the same name. Not a great album, by the way. Just a cool name. It also gets its name from Borderlands 2, because the enemies you fight at the beginning of the game were called Marauders, and David and Ryan thought the word was cool.
This song took the longest to get right in the studio. The drum track was recorded back in March of 2020, when Ryan wasn’t as good at the drums, so we had to make a bunch of edits to the recording to get it the way we wanted it. We also had to do a couple vocal takes to get those right too. For some reason, the piano solo took David FOREVER to record. He just couldn’t get his hands to work that day. Poor guy.
The choir-like vocals at the end of the song were an improvisation in the studio when David was recording the vocals. It’s 8 tracks of that same melody sang in four different octaves, which ended up creating a really cool effect. There are some mega-high notes in there buried in the mix if you can spot them, haha.
Final Version
[Verse]
Pleasantly underground
I’m making the most of my time
I find that with a few more days here
I’ll finally be warm
Sky paints a magenta hue
Over bonsais born before our time
I find that I am not so different
Than the ground I’ll leave behind
[Chorus]
Reaching outer space [rocket ship into the sky]
Sun is real estate [earth seems so small from up high]
Smile, you’re half awake [running in circles outside]
My filthy hands could turn the earth
[Outro]
Oh-oh-oh
Original Version
Pleasantly underground
Can I interest you in some wine?
Tomorrow night I’ll be in Paris, is there anything you need?
Oh, I bought some cards for you
I hope they’ll keep you warm
I saw them in the store and the price was my favorite number, 12
Reaching outer space [rocket ship into the sky]
Sun is real estate [earth seems so small from up high]
Smile, you’re half awake [running in circles outside]
My filthy hands could turn the earth
Here is a performance from mid-2019 with an early version of the song. The bridge is completely missing and there’s some bad 2019 David vocals on there.
This is a performance of the piano solo when we first wrote it. This is probably somewhere around August 2019.
Here’s a demo of the song David made a little after that first performance. You can hear a different guitar riff opening the song, and the piano riff from the final song is used as the bridge.
(If this doesn’t load for you, reload the page. Idk why it does that lol)
This song is likely to continue being performed for a long time. It’s a really fun one to play, and it’s been played since our first “real” show. David likes it because he doesn’t have to do anything during the first verse so he can mess with Keegan while he’s trying to sing. The piano solo is also really simple and fun to play. People like to headbang during the chorus, which none of us expected since it’s not a heavy song but we love it regardless.
It’s a great song to play after Help Me Doctor!! to continue that “swing”-y feel. It also flows really well between the two. Sometimes, we do a medley of this and Help Me Doctor!! when we don’t have enough time in the set to play both.