Earlier today, Glass Ghost’s Eliot Krimsky detailed each track on Idol Omen.
1. Time Saving Trick: The inspiration for the words of this song came when I was playing background jazz at a retirement party for a high powered lawyer. I started paying attention to the toasts that people were giving to this lawyer. Their language sounded oddly cold and they kept talking about ’saving time’ and how this man was ‘finally free’. It interested me, so I wrote down everything they said and eventually turned it into a song.
2. Mechanical Life: The main character of this song keeps trying to go about his daily life as expected, but the machines that he depends on (his computer, his car) keep making subtle errors until he finally exclaims ‘I’m living a mechanical life’!
Read the remainder of this interview AFTER THE JUMP…
3. Devisions: I was sleeping one day and I was awoke by an alarm clock sound. I arose in a half sleep/half dream state and I said out loud to my girlfriend: ‘Divisions’! ‘Man devided by the tone of the alarm clock’! The words for the song ‘Devisions’ came out of that exclamation. This song is about a man whose whole of self is divided by machines. At the same time, he lives with them and is apart of them.
4. The Same: I remember picking up a group of kids from school in China Town for a job that I once had. I was sleeping on my friends couch at the time and I was not doing too well personally. I saw a hawk flying over me and I thought about what kind of freedom that hawk feels. I wrote the words to ‘The Same’ in that moment.
5. Like A Diamond: I had just ended with my previous band, Flying, and I felt a new freedom. I was playing around with a couple of notes on the piano that sounded natural for my voice. It was then that ‘Like A Diamond’ came out. It all flowed out very naturally and there was no time to even know what it was. I brought it over to Mike’s room and it jelled immediately. We both listened to the practice tapes a got very excited.
6. Violence: A good friend of mine once was in prison in Amsterdam and in a manic state, he felt that he could dance like Micheal Jackson. He also felt such a clear power, that he was sure he could bend the bars of the prison. That image of him, with all of that power, behind prison bars was a potent one. I thought of myself behind those bars. My visceral self, my animal self might be there. The kind of violence that this song talks about is the natural kind of violence. Something that occurs without thought, like a storm. Michael Jackson’s movements were like that. There’s a great tenderness and compassion to nature, but at the same time there is a cold-bloodedness to it. Through abstract images I think this song was trying to explore some of these feelings that are so hard to capture into words.
7. What I’ve Seen: The words from this song were all taken from things that I have really experienced. I was teaching a little girl piano once and I had just broken up with my girlfriend. She asked me if I cried when we broke up and I said ‘Yes, it’s good to cry’. Then she told me ‘No, it’s not. My mom said that you only have a hundred tears and you should conserve them’. This is one of the scenes from the song.
8. Ending: Brian from our label, Western Vinyl, pointed out that there seems to be a main central character throughout all of the songs on this album. He noticed that by the last song, ‘Ending’, this character is going through a transformation. At the end of ‘Ending’, this character is proclaiming ‘Something new is happening, my molecules are changing, an aching heart is bleeding, he sets his clock to spinning’.
Watch the official video for ‘Like A Diamond’ here.
Visit Glass Ghost on MySpace.
New Yorkers can catch Glass Ghost tomorrow night at Bowery Ballroom.
