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TRUCKS LEAVING > 2002 > We turn you on you're a radio

The debut album is a risky little game. It is often the most considered project your average band will undertake, which is why second albums are often so very shitty.

We Trucks Leaving are considerers if nothing else, true, but we didn't want to spend years thinking about putting out a debut record. Instead, we speed-recorded two pop confections, a spoken-word-set-to-music piece and a suite of five love songs and released the whole slapdasherry in December 2002 as our debut, We turn you on you're a radio.

"Confessions of a shapeshifter" and "Everything" were written within weeks of one another, which is why they share almost the exact same compositional structure. The chorus mantras in both cases were supposed to be mere place-fillers, but then each song ended up being written around its place-filler chorus lyrics, so Todd figured there was no point in changing anyhthing. He also hoped beyond hope that, for the very first time ever, people might sing along.

"Get out of Madrid" is our Mog-speed tribute, featuring the shattering prose of Martha Gellhorn. The lyrics are sewn together from passages in Gellhorn's article "High explosives for everyone," which is available as part of an anthology of her combat dispatches called The face of war.

"Purr," "California," "Take your photograph," "Shadows" and "Sometimes I bring you down" are actually one composition, called "Five love songs." It was written as a private holiday present, but y'know, waste not want not and all that.

If you're clever, you'll find a version of "She is the chorus of a song" after the last of the love songs. And if you're counting, it's the third recorded version of said song (two versions appeared on Todd's 2001 solo album, Ghost). If you care to know, it won't be the last.


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