Other Lives: Daytrotter Session

Other Lives recorded a session with Daytrotter.com awhile back. They become the fifth Oklahoma artist to be featured on Daytrotter - Evangelicals and Aqueduct both sessioned there in 2007, as did The Uglysuit in 2008 and Samantha Crain earlier this year.

Below are mp3s from the session, including details on each song by the band.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “Precious Air”

This song was written in 2007. We recorded “Precious Air” for our album and we didn’t quite capture it in the studio. We had an earlier demo that we recorded on our own in Oklahoma and we ended up releasing that version of the song on our 5-song EP that we released last year.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “It Was The Night”

This song was written for a dear friend that I lost.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “AM Theme”

We wrote this song about a documentary called “The Bridge.” “The Bridge” is a 2006 documentary film by Eric Steel that tells the stories of a handful of individuals who committed suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004.

DOWNLOAD: Other Lives - “Paper Cities”

This song started out as a piano riff that I had for a long time. Musically, this song kind of came together in parts. The lyrics on the other hand were sort of a theme we all had on our minds. This song is about the helplessness and feeling of disconnection we have had during the war. We all know family and friends overseas and it hit close to home.

From Daytrotter:

The Other Lives are cardiovascular. The Stillwater, Oklahomans are as good as a 10-mile run is for the old ticker. They’re as good as any other reasonable method of strengthening that pump that takes up a good amount of space on the south side of the ribcage. It enlarges the resilient, damned thing so much so that the trustworthy organ starts to pulse against those thin bones and you can feel it everywhere else in your body – exactly what they’ve done in terms of growth, for you as well as the many others that they’ve put themselves in contact with. Jesse Tabish doesn’t seem to have any trouble in getting compelled to delve into a story or a situation that involves painful remembrance or dramatic consequences, coating the swirling thoughts in the kind of open plain country-folk ringing and rustling that makes any man, woman or child feel what it might mean to be lonesome and forgotten. And that may not be the intention. Likely, these are songs that are meant to buoy a soul and that’s there, but Tabish and the young group do a job on making the actual story and the various points of interest feel as if they’re so personal that we shouldn’t take our eyes or ears off of them for we’re their protectors and are responsible for any of their aches and tears. It alone is enough to make a person come into closer contact with the weight of the sadness that he writes into his lyrics, which tend to veer through very personal episodes as well as mingling them with other stimulations brought in through other means less closely held. Without trying to make a person feel isolated with their own rambling troubles and their own significant glooms and terrors – those meaningful matters of restless nights – Other Lives has the ability to blow the top of your head out, allowing all of these somber spirits crawl on in and get their vagrancy on, bringing their neediness and their misfortunes straight to your temples. In letting these various sorts in, the capacity for pulling from these stories the great depths of intimacy and the great darkness of impact increases and suddenly we’re all there with the one Tabish is singing about – from the late friend in “It Was The Night” (singing, “You were so gone when we found you/It was the hour you had come back/You were so gone/And all of the reasons we’re not meant to know/Let the wind sweep over you/And hear the sound that’s calling you to come..back.”) to the other odd folks who just happen to make an impression on the writer, preying on his affinity for devastatingly harsh light and uncomfortable, but gorgeous heaviness. Other Lives fill their songs with some shimmering abandonment, the issues of lives changing and lives getting cold and barren before someone’s very eyes. Without needing to hightail it for the hills, drifting out into the middle of nowhere, we’re left hijacked and completely immobile in our cranium, thinking about those outside and around us as flittering fascinations – those who could love us, hurt us, miss us, ignore us, stun us, worry us or embrace us. It’s just always confusing where they’ll take us – to which destination – and this is a place that’s most unbearably absolute for Tabish and Other Lives.