Thornhill Interview: Deep Into The Dark Pool

It was a Tuesday morning and I was about to be interviewing Thornhill‘s vocalist Jacob Charlton about their debut album The Dark Pool. If you’ve ever been super excited and curious about something, to the point of there being TOO MUCH that you could potentially ask, and you subsequently become like a giant speechless blur of enthusiasm, you’d be coming close to my state of mind leading into this.

On the other end of the phone, somewhere else in this sprawling city of Melbourne, Jacob was just waking up. I clued him in to my struggle in containing my curiosity, wondering how I could fit all of my thoughts and questions within an interview timeframe. In response he said “I’m an open book. Give her a go”, and so I did.

Zombies and Superheroes

Firstly, I wanted to know about the ‘world’ of The Dark Pool. It is in no way a concept album, but there are many moments along the way that could potentially be hooking into a world that’s very different to ours. Being held by the sky, seeing the sun go dark, trying to save others, seeming to separate due to collapse of life as we know it – all of those things seemed part of the album’s environment. Thinking a bit before answering, Jacob shared “I think as a music video-esque concept, there was one, but as the general meanings of each song, the only world was the world I was living in at the time of writing it. The world that was happening to me at the time.” 

I began to suspect that it was an appreciation for comic books, superheroes, horror movies, doomsday scenes and the like that seeped into Jacob’s writing, and give it an otherworldly perspective. And I got thinking that maybe these things also work as a convenient metaphor-rich lens through which to explore very real things. “I love writing about stuff like that, and I was always one of those kids that would constantly think about what I’d do in a zombie apocalypse and where I’d go. So it definitely comes through in some of my writing.”

To me, the songs of The Dark Pool take a long time fascination with superhero characters and unreal and life-changing scenes of tragedy, and explore the internal experiences of hypothetical characters in an intricate way; such as how people would cope as individuals on the cusp of the planet dying, the relationships that would exist, and how they’d be affected.  Considering the album, Jacob says “It’s what you’d do in a crisis, like how people react in the face of death, which is pretty much “Where We Go…” is. Do you surrender? Do you give up? How do you cope? I think it’s really important. I think it’s really important to show visually too. You get so much emotion out of stuff like that.”

A literal superhero made his way into two music videos for The Dark Pool, navigating his superhero life and interacting with others. The role was acted by Jacob’s younger brother, Asher in “Nurture” and “Where We Go When We Die”.  The sweet story about how this came to be made me ‘aww’ for a bit. Talking about his brother, Jacob said “We love comics, we love superheroes. We’ve always been like ‘Oh I want to play a superhero in a Marvel or DC movie!’ And I was like ‘I’ve got the opportunity for you to actually do that if you want to do that’. He was like ‘Yeah!'” 

Via Asher’s role, and maybe with movies like The Incredibles in mind, Jacob had wanted to visually explore the idea of how unrealistic it would be for kids to be superheroes. “Even if you have the skills, the mental capabilities of not being able to sleep, seeing death or accidentally taking it to far is so interesting to the psyche, to his psyche even in this video. Like what drives this dude to get out of bed every day? To save people? Is that what it is? Or is it to fuel something in yourself. I think it was just important because it was what it means to be loved, which is the actual point of the song,  That to tie that into the music video was ‘What’s the point?’.”

At this point of our conversation, Jacob shared some interesting insider information relating to the superhero character: “Well you never saw his parents. I don’t want to give it away because I don’t know if people have noticed the connection between “Where We Go…” and “Nurture”, but I’ll just say it: You never see his parents, but you can see in the photos that the photo of the mum is the mum in “Where We Go…”.”

Elaborating, he said “You don’t actually know their relationship. You never see them because they don’t care about him, they don’t exist in his world. So who’s there to nurture him? He has no one there, but seeing the people need help is his call to just feel good about himself or to do something out of the ordinary. I mean if you really read the news report, it says “The superheroes have gone missing”. They don’t exist. Kind of like at the start of that movie The Incredibles when they get stopped; they’re not allowed to be superheroes anymore. So in this universe that we created there, there aren’t any superheroes left. There’s no one there to help. So what kind of crisis leads an ordinary kid to become extra ordinary is really kind of what it discusses.”

I took the opportunity to talk about how moving it was when the superhero showed up in the “Where We Go When We Die” music video too and held hands with the female character. I shared with Jacob “Knowing me, I probably cried when I saw that part.”  Jacob revealed that it was a deliberately timed moment of the music video with the song. He said “I almost cried when they held hands. There’s a lot of things that I wanted, that I’d written down as timestamps and stuff like that. But I knew in that soft part they had to meet and had to hold hands. It was just so perfect, with the wind and the sunset, it was crazy.  Because they were shot on two different days, even in “Where We Go…” was two different days of story shots. It was so lucky that the days were so similar, because it looks like it’s the same day which is perfect.”

Jacob + Ethan

Moving on a little, we talked more about the feel and atmosphere of The Dark Pool. The album had guitarist Ethan McCann taking a primary role in forming songs and Jacob penning lyrics. Since working together to make music for some time now, they have found clarity in their respective creative roles. “We’ve kind of slotted into where we belong in the band and it’s taken a little bit of time, but I think Ethan and I always knew where we sat when we were young, you know; who does what. Because I can’t play guitar very well and he is a frickin machine at guitar, but he can’t make lyrics. And so we kind of stood back and were like ‘You do that. You do that. Okay cool’.”

In this creative relationship, there was a lot of inspiration gained by how Ethan’s creations would feel to Jacob and what they’d inspire in him in response.  As two examples, the feeling Ethan inspired in “The Haze” is what inspired its title, and “Red Summer” had felt like the concept of not being able to save everyone. Jacob explained further “I feel like the sound he can give me is the name I can give it and I can just roll with the atmosphere from there. I very rarely have names or concepts done before the songs are there.  I definitely write down some names and lyrics before, but I can’t give anything names before really feeling it. It has to make sense for me. And I know that for “Where We Go…”, it’s such a long track and such a journey, I was just like ‘It needs a big baller name that takes you on a journey as much as the song does’. And I had a couple of different ones before I was happy with it. Actually even for the album I had a couple of different ones before we were happy. I feel that you should feel what you read while you listen.”  I totally agree with that!

Though The Dark Pool is still clearly a Thornhill release, it’s definitely different in some ways. Were they expecting backlash from people? Complaints? Jacob said “Yes, bigtime” quietly. He shared that they weren’t sure that “Nurture” was a good song to have as a single released by way of not completely sharing the essence of the album, but felt that releasing “Where We Go…” would then potentially ‘balance it out’, in terms of expectations.

There has been a relatively positive response, and some of the songs that Jacob felt were “weaker” and might have garnered most criticism have actually been talked about as peoples’ favourites. He said “Seeing people like the songs I was scared about is really awesome, you know? Makes me feel really good, because I was definitely… well we were all packing our pants, except for MVD [guitarist Matt Van Duppen]. MVD was hugely confident about the album, which is sick. He’d always try to tell us it’s good and we’re like ‘Mmm nah’. He’s been saying that since 13 and I don’t know about that.”

There are clearly more synth sounds on the album, which is something that Ethan’s interest drove. Jacob shared that the band fully backed this exploration though and wanted to push for it to be on The Dark Pool. Jacob said “It’s even in the heavier songs like “Views…” and stuff and I just think it’s cool. I don’t think it was anything we really thought about or were scared about, it was just something we wanted to explore.”

Title and Track Shuffles

I took the opportunity to talk up “Red Summer” (again), saying it’s my favourite. And I’m glad I did because of the conversation it inspired:

Jacob: “It was my favourite to write. I definitely think it’s my favourite lyrics I’ve written.”

Kel: “It’s kind of like the title track in a way?”

Jacob: “Yeah, well it actually literally was because it was called “The Dark Pool”.”

Kel: “Ahh, and you changed it.”

Jacob: “Yeah, that song was “The Dark Pool” and the album was called “Human”. “Human” the actual song was called “Touch”. And so there were a couple names we had to change around. “Netherplace” was actually the track name of a song for “Temperer” times, even earlier than that. I’ve had that name for years and I really wanted to use it. It’s like a street name in Cranbourne or something. I thought it was really cool.”

Kel: “That’s the piano piece which is quite different for you guys. Was that Ethan’s idea?”

Jacob: “I wrote the start, and Ethan kind of flexed from there. He wrote the rest of it and then I re-played it and played the whole thing in a way that could be played by piano. Because the way he wrote it was too hard for me, I was like ‘Dude, this is insane’. But it sounded so sick, like ‘Oh man, this is crazy’. So we kind of re-recorded it and I played it the way he wrote it and that’s what we got. It’s fun, I loved it.”

Kel: “Interesting that it was going to be called Human. When I was reviewing it, I was noticing so many of these ideas tied together by life and death and love and connections over time and space. Was that kind of what you were going for?”

Jacob: “Yeah, well that was the whole concept behind the name Human, but as soon as we changed it to The Dark Pool, it meant I could do it in a cooler way that wasn’t blatant and obvious. You stare into a dark pool and you see your reflection, and what are you? You’re a human, and you are going through your own things. And by that it means that listening and hearing these songs and these lyrics means that you create your own meaning. Which is pretty much what you did in your review, these songs meant different things to you that weren’t even the original meanings to me. And I think that’s cool, and then it’s more interesting to each listener. It’s definitely something I wanted to express with this record. They don’t have to mean anything to you, or they could mean everything to you. It was really cool that people could decipher each meaning by themselves.”

Metaphors

In the time that I’ve known of this band and followed them, it has seemed like “Lily & The Moon” is the most obvious they’ve been with lyrical meaning. With their knack of using metaphors of nature, I asked if there was some safety in not being so blatant. Jacob affirmed that despite it’s literal title, the song has a broader meaning of talking about mortality and the inevitable outcome of death for us all. Seeing people he loves (and that includes Lily the dog) starting to age has put the concept of mortality front and centre for Jacob which had him want to explore it in a song.

“All The Light We Don’t See” refers to silver cords when talking about life and death, and is a beautiful piece of music. Elaborating on the choice of words, Jacob says “The silver cord is what attaches your physical body to your astral form. So in a way when it says “break the silver cord”, it means let go and die. And then “paint the silver gold” it is pretending that everything’s good. “Lily & the Moon”, the actual title, Lily and I when we were younger, whenever there was a really big moon or a red moon or something, we’d go for a walk at night and just sit and watch it together. So that’s kind of what it represents.”

Song Meanings, Track By Track

Since we seemed to be already heading into track-specific curiosities, and Jacob was kind enough to get into that while on the phone with me, we went through the songs of The Dark Pool, track by track:

“Views From The Sun”

“It was written kind of in a way that’s like a final letter to someone watching the world die from the sun. This was going to be a video actually but we decided not to because it was the first track. It was sending a message to someone who made it off earth before the sun came crashing into earth. It was kind of a love letter. This song actually connects to “Human” as an opposite letter to someone who was on that planet. So it’s between two lovers,  from the earth and outside of the earth. It’s their anger about being left behind to die, but also just describing the events that are unfolding.”

“Nurture”

“It’s just about toxic love, really. The unhealthy part that people don’t think about when describing that word. It’s literally just forms of love that are unhealthy and make you feel worse than you did. I think sometimes when you think about love, it’s all happy, but there’s a lot of gross things about love that’s never really described. And I’ve definitely experienced them and I think that’s why I talked about it a bit. It’s interesting, like “Happy or just distracted by love”. Are you happy or are you just going through the motions?”

“The Haze”

“”The Haze”, it kind of blurs your mind. It’s about the internal battle with addiction or like the struggles of self-harm or alcoholism or a form of drug. It’s kind of like being blurred by what it is to be human. Addiction is a huge thing in the world. I described it more metaphorically than going out and saying ‘this meaning’. It’s more about the internal battles we have with our own demons in our head, you know? The haze we feel when we need a fix. It doesn’t even have to be drug related, it could be your caffeine addiction, it could be your addiction to social media, it could be anything. But it’s that initial feeling, that initial craving for something that is described as “the haze” in this song. It’s that blurred feeling in your brain behind your eyes.”

“Red Summer”

“I loved that song but I don’t anymore. It’s too hard. That last chorus is insanely high. I think it’s the highest note I’ve ever sung. Crazy. “Red Summer” is kind of about what it means to not be able to save everyone and the toll it must take. Like something I’ve always thought about is you have superheroes, but you have superheroes in real life, as lame as that is. You have ambulance, fire fighters, police… They are the heroes of what our world is, really. They save lives every single day. But what toll does that take to not be able to save everyone?

“I think it’s something discussed in superheroes a lot, in comics, but it’s not something discussed enough in life, in the world we live in. Even army vets, stuff like that, not being able to get there in time, not being able to save everyone. It must be an absolute journey in your own brain to find forgiveness in yourself. I think that’s an incredible concept to grasp for normal people without actually experiencing that.

“I think a lot of things on this album are like that in a way. Humans can’t appreciate crisis without experiencing it, which is kind of sad. People really go through trauma, and people really go through these issues, but other people kind of step back and say ‘Oh yeah, that sucks, but it’s not that bad’. But as soon as they experience it, it’s the end of the world. And it sucks that we can’t reciprocate and empathise with these people about how horrible these things are. It’s just an interesting way for me to kind of describe superheroes in our world, you know?”

Kel: “There’s a lot of really strong lines in there as well “Buried in ravens, hoping for doves” “Drowning in a pool of blood”.  I guess that’s the trauma yeah?”

Jacob: “Yeah, and like being “ready to let the water in”, you know? Just giving up. Because, you’re in the deep end; you’re ready to swim, you’re ready to go for it. But if you don’t make it, you’re ready to let the water in; you’re ready to drown, because that’s how you’re feeling in your mind. That actual full chorus was written before the album was made, and I wanted to fit it so badly somewhere but I didn’t want to change it. I was like ‘These are some of my best lyrics, but where am I going to put it?’. And oh I was so lucky it got in there. It was probably my favourite one to listen to.”

“In My Skin”

“Body image is what that song’s about. Maybe not even loving yourself for what you look like, but at least loving yourself for trying to do something about it is pretty much what it means to me. Body image is a very hard one in our society in how we perceive ourselves is pretty toxic and I definitely suffer from it pretty bad, and trying to find enlightenment in your own self worth has been a bloody journey and a half.”

Kel: “Yeah it would be. Especially in the position you’re in, you know, frontman, all eyes on you..”

Jacob: “Yeah, it doesn’t help. Seeing all the videos, I’m like ‘Fucking hell, I look so ugly. What is going on there!””

Kel: “But you know no one else is thinking that. No one else is scrutinising ourselves as hard as we’re scrutinising ourselves, but that doesn’t necessarily change it.”

Jacob: “That’s it. I read somewhere that you look 10% better than you think you do or something. Which is tight!”

Kel: “Yeah [laughs]. Like, when I think about someone, I think about their smile and their disposition and how it feels to be around them. I don’t necessarily think about their body shape or how great their skin is or anything.”

Jacob: “Yeah, and the thing is that the only people who really see that is you anyway. [laughs] It’s such an irrational thing.”

Kel: “It really is. It doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you strongly.”

Jacob: “Yeah, that’s exactly the point. It’s like, it’s not a big deal but it’s always going to be a big deal to you no matter what. You can have a million people say you’re good looking and one person say you’re fat and you’re fat. That’s just the way you see it. And it’s the same I guess with negative comments.”

Kel: “The 5 out of 10. [laughs]”

Jacob: “Yeah yeah, you see a 5 out of 10 and you’re a 5 out of 10 band. Oh man. I’m glad it’s become a meme though, because everyone seems to be happy about it again. I’m glad MVD was on it. None of us actually saw it and he was already reposting it and then we saw it. But I guess for a tech-metal band, which I didn’t even know we were, it’s a 5 out of 10 album. We’re not Northlane. Oh well.”

“All The Light We Don’t See” / “Lily & The Moon”

“It’s kind of more of an intro track. The title itself is about something I was always scared about with my parents or my family or my dog, as being part of my family, is not taking the most out of the time they have here and wasting it, and regretting it when they’re gone. All the light we don’t see is like all the love and happiness we don’t see when we’re too busy doing other things. And it’s always scary when you feel like you’re wasting your opportunities or your last moments, which really leads into “Lily..”.”

Kel: “Yeah, I had family members pass away and the little niggling annoyances fade away and what’s left is all that’s great about them that I perhaps didn’t celebrate enough while they were here.”

Jacob: “Exactly. That’s the most horrible part. That’s where regret comes from, you know? Stuff like that.”

Kel: “I love that line “I’d climb all the way to where they left your soul just to bring you back”, that’s like OUCH! Knife to the heart, that one.”

Jacob: “Yeah that’s sick, because I love that line. I remember coming up with it and telling Ethan how I was going to do it. I told Ethan and Cage [bassist Nick Sjogren] and Cage loved it. He was like ‘Yes, that’s sick’. Doing that scream was really hard though, cause my screams suck, but going from singing to screaming in that part was kind of hard. [laughs]”

“Coven”

“”Coven”‘s about identifying anxiety I guess as like a living thing, as something that moves around and is always around you. Because I know I have insane issues with that that I don’t really talk about, and I don’t really want to talk about, and I don’t really treat it as anxiety. I just treat it as ‘Oh I get really really really really nervous’ … all the time. [laughs] I have heaps of issues before going on stage. I even like get nervous before interviews, like this one. I can’t handle it. I get shaky, I can’t sleep. I cannot sleep before tour.”

Kel: “I was really nervous too!”

Jacob: “Do you get like that as well?”

Kel: “Yeah, like today I was like ‘Okay I’m noticing I’m feeling nervous, BUT I’ve been listening to this album since my review, I’ve been listening to it on repeat, I know the album, I’ve got the lyrics, I know you, I don’t have any problems talking to you at gigs and stuff, so why am I nervous?’. And I was kind of like ‘Um it’s probably because of all the pressure I put on myself to do everything perfect.’ [laughs]”

Jacob: “[laughs] I get the same. I get that. I was like ‘Man, I know Kel, why am I freaking out? This is my album’. But I’m still like ‘Ooh, do I know enough about the album to talk about it?’. [laughs]”

Kel: “No, I can fully relate, I felt stupid. Why am I nervous?! It’s dumb. It’d be totally fine if I just ran into you at a gig but for some reason it’s like ‘Ooh! Phone interview! Stress!'”

Jacob: “Legit. It’s so annoying, and I get like that before tours, before shows. I get super stressed about my voice on tours and stuff like that, but I’ve got a new mantra kind of thing that I say to myself, and I started doing it before we played Unify because I was really sick before Unify. You just have to tell yourself ‘The events that are going to happen have already happened’, you know? ‘Whatever’s going to be is going to be’ and you just have to do the best with what you have. And people are never going to fully appreciate you on stage anyway, so you might as well just do it enough that you’re happy, that you can get off and say ‘You know what? I did my best’ and that’s all you can ask for. And I think it’s something that I’ve been able to deal with and it’s something that has gotten better and has gotten worse at the same time. I think I treat it in this song as something that is really scary. It’s something that’s creeping around, that’s following you, like a shadow, and I think that’s how it always feels to me. I feel like some people can really identify with that as well which is cool.”

Kel: “Yeah! So is it a bit of a witchy thing based on the name “Coven”?”

Jacob: “Yeah! Oh my god. It’s so good to hear you say that properly. Oh my god, I get so many ‘coh-ven’s and I’ve never heard that word be called ‘coh-ven’ before. I don’t get it. Like ‘cuh-van’ or ‘coh-ven’. I’ve never really heard anyone just say ‘coven’. Freaks me out. It’s weird, right? I was like ‘It’s gotta be dark, it’s a full-on song, so it needs to be something a bit spooky’. When I imagine anxiety in this song as a thing, I kind of imagine it as that movie The Babadook. Have you ever seen it?”

Kel: “No, I don’t think so! I’m going to Google.”

Jacob: “Well yeah I kind of imagine it like that. It’s got a big top hat and it’s like scary.”

Kel: “Oh yeah, that’s horrible, yeah.”

“Human”

“”Human” is a callback to “Views…” which is what I said before; it’s a letter back to someone they left behind in an apocalyptic world. In the original concept for this, which I might as well say, is that the person who is outside of earth is actually not a human. In a way they’re an alien. Or at least that’s how they feel metaphorically, so they came to earth to find out what it means to be human and compare it to what they think it is to be themselves. And so they sent a letter back to someone they left behind and they don’t understand our way of connection, it’s a foreign love. It’s how we exist on earth together and they just don’t understand and that’s why they left. But [laughs] they kind of left them to die is the big concept behind that one.”

It turned out that the distance between two that I felt while reviewing was light years of distance! Elaborating on the song and its concept, Jacob says “I think the big line in that one is really what makes you human? What sets you apart?. Like what makes you different to everyone else on this place. I don’t want to be here. What makes you different? And they kind of describe the issues we are facing here, which is “Human extinction, would you say that life exists to change”. Is that the point? Are you telling me that all this destruction is because life exists to change? Like are you the big bosses of the world destroying the world in order to progress. It’s kind of where we go.. haha.. with “Where We Go…”. Definitely trying to talk about as much wrong with the earth as they can see, but from a foreign point of view. Like I can imagine someone coming to earth as an alien would just be like ‘what is this shitshow?’. And that’s kind of what “Human” was about.”

“Where We Go When We Die”

“The song to me is about my belief in the world. It’s not really religious, or if religion exists, or anything like that because I don’t really want to touch on that. Because I’m not religious at all, but it’s not something that I want to shove down peoples’ throats in terms of being an atheist. I do think it’s important to believe in something and I think that it’s cool that people have found faith, but it’s not my thing personally. But in this song it’s like finding a faith in yourself is important but the fact that we try to fast-track our lives to get to what we think is paradise rather than realising that we need to protect the paradise we live in, which is, the world.

“It’s literally luck. In an atheist way, it’s luck that this earth exists. It was just an asteroid, and it’s lucky that life found a way, and the way we are destroying it is ruining all the progress we made before life existed. And I think it’s just this life is paradise. You walk into a rainforest, you walk to the mountains, to anything where you find solace and you realise the importance of clean air, clean water, animals thriving. That is paradise, because this world was a paradise and we’re destroying it. People don’t give a shit and the the people that can change it know that they’re not going to be around to see it in its worst state, which I think is the bad part. You’re leaving it for future generations to solve, but it’s going to be unsolveable. It’s just sad.

“The song’s not really about an alien invasion, which I kind of wish would happen because it would be cool, but in terms of just tearing our world apart, “Where We Go When We Die” is nowhere for this song. Because we’re going to die here and then the world’s going to die. All at the same time.”

Dark indeed.

The Dark Pool Cover Art

My final question related to the cover art for The Dark Pool. I love the look of the torn paper and the layers of depth to it. Jacob shared how it came to be.

“We wanted a collage thing. Ethan and I found the collage kind of vibe, we’re like ‘Whoa this is sick, I haven’t seen any band do this yet’, which was really cool because I really wanted to flex something as different as we could. I wanted to do something like we did for Butterfly where you don’t have to put your title on it, you don’t have to put the name or the band name on it. Because I feel like if you become a record that’s good enough for people to recognise with just an image, you’ve done really well. Which is what we did with Butterfly and really what we wanted to express; for people to recognise that cover and know who it was straight away, which is the same with what I really wanted for The Dark Pool. We were struggling.”

The band had hunted for four months, and the album was three-quarters finished and they still couldn’t find a cover and didn’t have a name either. “It’s really hard trying to get five people to connect on one piece of art for the rest of your life.” Jacob had followed a bunch of collage creators on social media, as well as worked with one of their friends Jon Pisani to try and recreate the idea they had. “We just couldn’t get it. The thing is, it’s hard to tell someone what you want when you’re not really sure what you want until you see it. We were sort of stuffing him around a bit.

“But one night… one fateful night.. I stumbled across this picture on the Instagram search part, and I just saw this image and I was like ‘Oh!’. I remember as soon as I saw it, I was like ‘This is cool but it’ll probably be another throwaway thing that no one would like’. But anyway I sent it to Ethan straight away and was like ‘This is going to be sick’. He was like ‘Oh! this is amazing!’ and then he sent it to Cage and Cage was like ‘Whoa!’ and then I sent it to MVD and MVD was like ‘Yeah this is sick’ and then Maida was like ‘Yep’ and so it was done. It was literally done in two minutes, so four months compared to two minutes. That’s how quickly it can change. It’s so stupid. But I’m so glad it worked.”

In the collage there’s layers of stars and galaxy, which is something Jacob says that they wanted, without heading into any kind of overdone territory of ‘space djent’. But space was something Jacob really wanted, describing himself as someone that looks up a lot at the sky. “Seeing all the stars and stuff is amazing. But doing that on the cover and doing that in terms of the lyrical content is very hard to do without being the same shit you’ve heard or seen before. And I know we were trying very hard to find a cover, it was like ‘Nah, this is just space djent as’ and it needs to represent what the album sounds like. As soon as we found it, it was like perfect.”

Inspired by the image, The Dark Pool came together. “I came up with the meaning for what you see on this record instantly. It’s a ripple, it’s like water, it’s the dark pool. I just think it also describes the record really well by there just being one little dude there. You go through life really by yourself. You’re by yourself, you find your own way, it’s personal, it’s individual, and that’s kind of what I wanted to discuss on the record, and that’s what you can see.  It’s only one little guy, searching his way through the universe, it’s all layers and I think that’s pretty much what you do in your own life.”

We ended our call shortly afterward, and I was left feeling like there wasn’t much that we didn’t cover about The Dark Pool and all of the different ideas and inspirations that led to the finished album that we hear today.