Colour Revolt - “Naked and Red”

This month, we take a look at Colour Revolt’s “Naked and Red,” appearing on the first full-length record Plunder, Beg, and Curse (Fat Possum). Here, the band goes into depth about the slow-building nervous breakdown that snowballs into a noisy fit by the song’s end.

Q: Your music is known for jarring transitions between atmospheric and jaggedly loud sections of songs. With this one, did you make a conscious effort to blur the line between extremes?
A: Well, this song was one of the first songs we started working on after the EP and it really went through some different phases. I don’t think there was ever a discussion to make the song not have a chorus or be in some middle territory — it definitely has extremes. We just liked the main riff of it and wanted to try and exploit all the parts of that one riff without having to deal with that whole verse-chorus-verse tradition.

Q: How did you go about structuring this song? Did you have any models for how you wanted it composed in the end?
A: I personally like to use Refused as a good example for this kind of structuring. They’re really good at finding the actual song under all the commotion that goes along with writing a song and use different versions of the same part in the same song and make it feel completely different. Then you get to the end and you don’t even know what just happened. That’s a way cool composition technique that I always noticed and liked and wanted to try and steal.

Q: “Naked and Red” contains a lot of biblical references complimented by strong imagery. Could you explain the process of gathering this stuff together into one song — especially when it pertains to such intense content?
A: Lyrics are usually a free association type thing that is introduced by rhythms in the song. Some times it’s not necessarily as much about the content as it is the way the melody works with the rest of the song and the picture it’s painting. I like to use religious images because they might make a setting more awkward-feeling or more relevant feeling for some reason. The picture is a bit broader when you throw eternal imagery in there. I guess it can be too much of a crutch, too.

Listen to “Naked and Red” at myspace.com/colourrevolt.