To me, this song almost feels like it’s 6 minutes long, not 3, because it took a long time to craft and record. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think of it as kind of a punk-progressive rock kind of song, cuz it blows through a lot of different material (mixed meters and odd phrases and whatnot) than I’m used to putting in a song, within the typical punk rock time frame of up to 3 minutes.

“fl0werbed” is structured in a simple ternary form (ABA), and I wanted the A and B sections to complement each other musically. The A section is mostly acoustic with relatively intense vocals, while the B section is metal-inspired but with more chill vocals.

I had a lot of fun experimenting with uneven phrases and mixed meters, which is something I don’t normally do. When Neil Peart passed away I started listening pretty obsessively to Rush, so I’m sure that that has something to do with it. It also made it strange to record because I did the guitars first, and then I had to figure out what the hell I could play on drumset that sounded convincing but that wasn’t outside of my limited range of ability. Hopefully it comes through in the mix!

I named this song “fl0werbed,” stylized with a zero, in reference to the first verse and the overall emptiness that the lyrics describe. (On other streaming platforms it shows up as “F.L0werbed” because of capitalization rules that Distrokid imposed on me.) Haha I suppose it’s a bit Bon Iver of me to do, but to me it seems to fit the intent of the song.