Premiere: Surprises - “A Peace Anthem”

We’re thrilled to premiere a new track from Brooks Paschal’s (formerly of the band Sullivan) upcoming solo album Natural Disaster.

We’re thrilled to premiere a new track from Brooks Paschal’s (formerly of the band Sullivan) upcoming solo album Natural Disaster. Titled "A Peace Anthem", the track continues to build the excitement for the new album; an irresistible mix of melody, biting lyrics, and resonate songwriting. Comparisons have been made to Jimmy Eat World, but in the end, "A Peace Anthem" (like much of Natural Disaster), is all Brooks Paschal. Natural Disaster is out May 31st via Spartan Records and you can pre-order a copy here.

We had a quick chat to Paschal about the track;

What was the catalyst that sparked the idea for the song?

Desperation. I was hitting a lull in the writing process, so I decided to move a mattress into my studio and just immerse myself in the process. I woke up one morning and immediately started writing. It was a fucking train wreck and I kinda started snowballing into a lot of bad thoughts. In a weird moment, I just tried to document what I was struggling within a song. That probably sounds like a natural process for most people, but I usually can’t write that way. "A Peace Anthem" just kinda came out from there. I think what is natural for me, is that when things go bad, I just start replaying every time something went bad for me in the past. I wanted to capture that train of thought in real time. 

The song is a mix of different emotions- the arrangements make it sound upbeat, but when your lyrics come in, it’s a whole different tone. I like that your lyrics resonate (“you fucked me for the last time”), but can leave interpretations open (“your face sucked me in”) - can you tell us a little bit about your thinking about the music and the lyrics and how they come together for this track?

Well, that’s me going into the past and drudging up shit that I think still might affect me now. One of my main goals in writing is to create the dilemma and simultaneously prevail from it. That’s where the lyrics and the music can kinda rub each other in a way that makes you feel two very different things at the same time. Like smoking a diablito. “You’ve fucked me for the last time” is really talking to the conglomeration of feelings that seemed to wreck my days from the jump. 

I feel like you could interpret the song in a few ways and I think listeners could come up different meanings of the song (as I did after a few listens). But as the songwriter, what is the song about?

I think ultimately the song is about process. It’s not uncommon for me to have bad days that I try to explain away by some past failure by myself or some time life failed me. A lot of the lyrics are just reliving those moments and remember those people. Whether it’s bullshit or not, I’d like to think I beat it by the end of the day/song. 

What was the recording like for this song, and for Natural Disaster - who produced the record?

I did the record myself. I’m a record producer by day, so I’m lucky enough to have a studio at my disposal. "A Peace Anthem" was like most of the songs in the sense that I demoed it immediately after it was written. I actually ended up keeping the scratch vocal for the first half of the song. I just couldn’t recreate that sleepy voice from the demo. 

Listen to "A Peace Anthem":