THE LINKS – TAKE IT AWAY
“Take It Away” came out of an impromptu recording session held earlier in 2019. Our drummer at the time was testing a certain mic setup, which led to the main drum patterns heard during the verses & choruses of the song. I played an acoustic guitar progression over that & sung a verse melody I had in my head at the time. We put a bassline on the verse somewhere along the line, then I felt compelled to play the chorus progression and sing the relatively “call & response” vocal lines that go over that.
After taking a few days from the song, we came back to re-assess the overall arrangement of the thing & put in the bridge. Troy (our guitarist/bassist) came in about halfway through the songwriting process for this one to put his own leads & guitar lines over the song which really brought it together with an additional post-punky layer which I further emphasized with some dreamy echo guitar stuff at various points in the song. We’d had a stray synth line come in after the first chorus which ended up being a bit of a lead-in to this brief guitar “solo” thing that occurs before verse 2.
When the song was essentially done, we were kind of jokingly referring ot it as a “sequel” to our other song Imperial, since they both had that kind of driving beat with a more simplistic (seemingly, at least) songwriting approach then some of our other tracks. In a way, it’s not total inaccurate. It’s a sort of follow-up to that kind of song with more of a bent to 80s music and that kind of VHS-dipped aesthetic – big drums, ringing echo-y guitars & all.
– J. Marola, singer/guitarist of The Links