The timing couldn’t have been worse. Fremantle four-piece Spacey Jane were about to release their 2020 debut album, Sunlight, when COVID struck and Western Australia shut its borders. With all tours canceled, guitarist/vocalist Caleb Harper coped the only way he knew how: by getting to work writing the follow-up. “These songs were a response to feeling like my world was falling apart because I couldn’t tour anymore,” he tells Apple Music. “This intense anxiety came with it. I felt like, I’ve got to do something, and writing was it.”
Taking its name from the working title Wilco gave their 2001 LP, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—Harper sought Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy’s permission to use the title, a request that was duly granted—Spacey Jane’s second album is awash with lush indie-rock hooks and harmonies. Its lyrics, however, speak of dark times mentally and emotionally, as Harper reveals in this track-by-track breakdown.
“Sitting Up”
“It was the last song written for the record. It’s kind of talking about how I was a bit of a chameleon in my early years of college—my first foray into the world after moving out of home. I had a full-blown identity crisis that’s probably still going, to be honest. I was trying to be everything to everyone. I just drank too much. I didn’t like myself because I didn’t know who I was.”
“Lunchtime”
“‘Lunchtime’ is the second or first song I wrote for the album, back in the very early days of COVID. I wrote it about this relationship I was in that had broken down four months prior, and I tried to tell this weird Natural Born Killers version of it where it was me watching a version of myself that I hated on this date, going to this weird desert, put to really fast music.”
“Lots of Nothing”
“That song’s one of the earliest we wrote. It’s just about feeling like a piece of shit—along with half of the album.”
“Clean My Car”
“Something I’ve experienced a lot with depression is feeling like there’s no point doing anything at all. In this song, it’s a metaphor for a breakup and what you do to try and get through those things: clean your car, mow the lawn, doing all these things to try and make up for the blackness that you’re seeing or feeling, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s within that’s the issue.”
“Hardlight”
“That was also written around the same time as ‘Clean My Car.’ It took months to get the chorus. I remember it was really hot, like 40 degrees in Perth, and I was sitting in my car, just cranking the air conditioning. I wrote the chorus and was like, ‘Yes!’ It’s about feeling embarrassed, and how anxiety makes you feel like you’re going to school every day with no pants on, like that nightmare that you have, but through the lens of someone forgetting their lines on set.”
“It’s Been a Long Day”
“It was written pre and post a breakup. Things were coming up for [the band], and we were really excited about being in music, and then touring stopped and the world seemed to end, in a sense. I grappled with that for a long time and didn’t necessarily handle that very well. I was so messed up and didn’t know how to say anything about it and didn’t feel like I was able to be there for the person when I didn’t even know what was wrong with myself. I was just really struggling. It’s a tough song; it’s hard to talk about.”
“Bothers Me”
“We were listening to a lot of SZA and Kacey Musgraves in the studio, and that was very inspirational for us. Because a lot of the music that we were making beforehand was—and still is, on this record—busy indie rock. But a big goal of this record was to make things feel a little more separated and have space in the music, and I think we achieved that on this song.”
“Not What You Paid For”
“It’s just a story of a really drunk 18-, 19-year-old getting to university and realizing it’s not exactly what they thought it was. Pretty much me, I suppose, but trying to talk about it more broadly.”
“Haircut”
“That song’s about trying to change all these parts about yourself to feel better about yourself and none of them working. And stuff I’ve done and tried to do to reinvent myself and pull myself out of a state of mind after a breakup or some dramatic life event and how it doesn’t necessarily do anything. It’s a common theme.”
“Head Above”
“It's about leaving home and the fractured relationship with my parents, and just feeling like there’s a point of no return sometimes. And I felt that both physically and metaphorically as I drove away in my 80 series Land Cruiser, packed with all my earthly belongings. Tough one.”
“Yet”
“It was a lot of fun to play. I came up with the song on keys, and it was one of the first times I’d done that. We’ve done a lot more of that with the record now, not just writing songs on acoustic guitar. It was really exciting and opened up a lot of things for me in terms of how I thought about songwriting for the rest of the record.”
“Pulling Through”
“There’s something ballady about ‘Pulling Through’ that made it perfect for the end. After all these stories I’ve told and all these experiences I’ve had, it’s gonna be OK. You’re probably pulling through. It’s hopeful. It was written for a friend who’d lost someone that they loved very much, a family member, but it can be about so many things. Pulling through is something we’re all trying to do.”