"Scotty Says" is one of those rare songs that appeared fully formed in my head. I'm typically a firm proponent of the get-your-ass-in-the-seat-and-do-the-work-instead-of-waiting-around-for-inspiration school of songwriting. But I woke up one morning around 1am with this song in my head, climbed out of bed, and cranked out a demo to send to the band. Earlier that day, I'd been listening to a mix that my friend Scotty had made. I'd met Scotty when I was 14 or 15; he was a decade older than me, and a staple in the local New Haven punk rock scene that I'd grown up in. He had a famously gregarious personality, and worked with tons of large and small touring acts that came through the area. But for some reason, he always treated me like a peer, and even after I left New Haven for the cooler climate of Boston, we still kept in touch. 

One day — shortly after the Roland High Life went on hiatus, when I was floundering to figure out what I wanted to do musically now that I was entering my late 20s — I got a random message from Scotty. "I've met many singers in my day, famous and not so famous," he said. "But you're are the only one i've ever known whose speaking voice sounds exactly like their singing voice. that's not an insult, so please don't take it that way...but i listen to your songs, and every time i think 'it's like Thom is here'."

It was the kind of message I needed to hear, at the time I needed to hear it, ya know?

Four months later, I woke up to a voicemail letting me know that Scotty was dead. To this day, I still have a lot of questions about the cause. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was just that rock n' roll lifestyle. Or maybe there was some deeper darkness going on. I don't know. I guess I never will.

But one thing I do know is that I've been haunted by Scotty's last words to me. And I hope this song — which, again, appeared fully formed in my head in the middle of the night, the way no other song has ever done — I hope this song paints a positive legacy of the kind of person he was, and the impact he had on the people he knew. This band may have never gotten back together if I hadn't taken Scotty's words to heart: that maybe I sing like myself, and maybe that's a good thing after all.

Thanks for listening.

Scotty Says (Single)

Scotty Says

Old Atlantic

Old Atlantic (Single)

Have you wondered what would happen if Weezer wrote songs about the IRA? "Oh Dolours" is an ode to Dolours Price, a radical feminist and volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. It's an exploration of the sacrifices people make in the name of liberation, and what kinds of compromises are actually worth the cost — particularly for women, who face sexist double standards even in militant resistance. We recruited the singers from Indoor Friends to join us in the third verse, to emphasize the role of women's voices in the radical narrative.

Oh Dolours — Single

Oh Dolours (featuring Indoor Friends)

There's one summer of my adolescence that I remember better than any of the others. It was the summer of 2002, between my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school. We had one friend with a license and a car – a Camry that we thought was the coolest car on earth because it was the top trim, with a good stereo and a moonroof – and we spent the whole summer riding around town, blasting music, smoking weed, and getting into low-grade trouble. (There are two song references in these lyrics, both of which were released in 2002: "Heavy Metal Drummer" by Wilco – an homage that admittedly borders on plagiarism — and "The Best Of Me" by the Starting Line. I didn't check the dates as I wrote them, they're just songs that are inextricably linked to a place and time in my brain.)

The phrase "always almost ready" has been kicking around in my head for years. As I get older I find myself wishing I could be that happy and carefree again, but I have gotten really good at finding excuses why I can't. A list of things I want to do, but won't because I don't have the time, or the money, or the right person to do it with. A picture of the life I want, but can't have until, or because, or unless. "Always almost ready" is the best way I've figured out how to express that feeling, and that one good summer became the foil to this feeling of self-imposed discontent.

Always Almost Ready

There’s no one in Brooklyn
No one but you
All these people passing by me
They don’t know me like you do
A sea of empty faces I am swimming through
No, there’s no one in Brooklyn

Got nothing to tell you
Nothing to say
If I open my mouth
It might give my heart away
And I can’t belong to you
'Cause I’m in love with yesterday
When there was no one in Brooklyn

No one in Brooklyn’s wondering when I’m coming home
No one’s asking where I’m going
It took a crowd to teach me how it feels to be alone
But I guess there’s strength in knowing

There’s no one in Brooklyn
No one but me
On an empty street at midnight
Singing where you want to be
It’s anywhere but here
But I don’t know how to leave
‘Cause then there’d be
No one
In Brooklyn

Songs About Comic Books and Mid-30s Malaise

No One In Brooklyn

There’s bad blood brewing on these streets 
You gotta stand for something
Are we the Jets and Greasers
Or will we let it slide
We didn’t start this fight
We’re damn sure gonna win it
We’re gonna stain this white
We’ll make this right a wrong

Chris and I cased the neighborhood
We found out that everybody sleeps in the middle of the night
And whether you’re doing good
If something’s worth doing then you’d better do it right
A gallon of gasoline
A pallet of paper goods
If we didn’t do it then, we never would
Real villains are alive in the schoolyard

Well we’re running now
Like water under
The bridges we burned down
They were always in our way

Chris and I cased the countryside
We found out not everybody sleeps in the middle of the night
And it’s a bumpy ride
But life is worth living so you’d better live it right
A gallon of gasoline
A highway to Hollywood
If we didn’t do it then, we never would

Real villains are alive in the schoolyard
Cold-blooded, killing time but it’s so hard
Fighting fires and building up rust, yeah
Spinning tires and kicking up dust, well

Real villains are alive in the schoolyard
Sticky fingers stealing kisses but the girls are
Bad medicine for boyish lust, yeah
This world is destroying us, well

Chris and I lived a little while
We found out that everybody dreams in the middle of the night
And if you live in style
You get a little better but you never get it right
So thanks for the memories
And thanks for the firewood
We didn't slow down, we never could

Real Villains

Every Girl Is An Apple

When The Roland High Life first started playing together in Boston in the mid-00s, the band had bonded over their scrappy emo/punk upbringings. As working class New England kids, they'd all played in bands from ska to folk-punk to hardcore. As a brand new indie rock band, they aspired to marry those sounds with the mature literary songwriting of artists like Warren Zevon, Elvis Costello, and Jeff Tweedy. 

That mix of high- and low-culture drove the DIY sound behind the band's debut EP, If You Really Want to Hear About It... . It also lead to the ten-year gap before the band released their next album, Another Other Dorset. The band still played together in those intervening years, honing their songwriting craft and Springsteenian pop-punk sound. But the chaos of adulthood had scattered them across the country, forcing the band to take a backseat.

With their newest album, "Songs About Comic Books & Mid-30s Malaise" (out Sept. 8), The Roland High Life has finally come full circle. The songwriting is sharper, using pop poetry to navigate the struggles of adulthood, while also looking backwards towards that nostalgic hope of comic books and youth. The production is more polished, too, with bigger sounds and more harmonies; yet it was all recorded in the their mothers' basements and childhood bedrooms, keeping with the theme of the album. 

Forwards and backwards. High- and low-brow. Welcome to The Roland High Life

The Roland High Life

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