Track Premiere: Elephant Jake—”Freshman Fifteen”
Posted: by The Editor
To know Elephant Jake is to love them. Blending elements of indie, emo, and a hint of punk with stunning precision and intriguing breadth, Elephant Jake are truly distinct. Fans of the band will already be familiar with “Freshman Fifteen” from their My Parents’ Basement Session released earlier this year, but will be able to view the song through a new lens with the official full band version. The chief difference here is the enthralling synth line that cuts through the song.
Colin Harrison, one half of the band’s vocal/guitar duo and main songwriter of “Freshman Fifteen”, said “I really like the variation across the different releases.” The song in its original form more closely resembled the acoustic version, but he was happy to flesh out the studio recording. “The synth part actually started as a guitar lick, but in the studio we were messing around with a keyboard and stumbled onto a preprogrammed square voice.” The band loved it, so much so that they decided to keep it in the song.
This experimentation was made possible in part because of an approach to recording that was much different than last year’s Classic., which was recorded in a single three-day weekend. This time around, the process was more drawn out and the band “put a lot more time into the songs themselves,” Harrison said. “Also Ethan Farmer, our close friend who tracked us, was a much more laid back, ‘don’t force anything’ type of guy.”
The song is lyrically about the feelings that come from being intentionally excluded from a social outing. As we round the corner to the final verse, the line “But at least I’m here with you, that’s something worth holding onto” brings the listener toward the same conclusion that Harrison came to: “the people who went weren’t worth hanging out with anyway.”
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Scott Fugger | @Scoober1013
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