It’s been a while since GULFER checked in on IDIOTEQ, so it’s our great pleasure to bring the exciting emotive math rockers back to our pages and give you the band’s new track “Neighbours”, just premiered online via streaming services.
When Gulfer guitarist and vocalist Vincent Ford sets out to write a song, the words often come before the music–and even then, the overarching meaning isn’t always clear until the song is complete. “Neighbours”–a frenzied and raucous one-off rife with technical flourishes–is no different.
Ford says that the song was written specifically about processing his experiences with a loved one diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that he only realized when the song was done. Between its noodly, punchy transitions–a signature staple of the band’s songwriting–Ford explores what it must have been like to live with schizophrenia and not know it.
Musically, “Neighbours” speaks to this mentally debilitating experience with tact and deliberation: frantic, stop-on-a-dime passages set a punkish, animated backdrop for Ford’s ruminations, giving him an appropriate setting to unpack his and his loved one’s experiences.
Lyrics:
nside I feel so strange my neighbours tapping on the windows
my god I felt the same feeling when I let you dying on the couch
and if I let my mind slip I know I’ll have an awful, awful timeand I let this pain arouse me for so long
and you came to save the last piece of this song
I prove to you that you think that i’m worth something
when I’m really what I think I’m worthI sit around and avoid all of these holes inside the wall
they evoke all of these ghosts trapped on the other side
they tell stories of hell what’s the matter with me
oh man how bad can it getwhat’s the matter with me
what’s the matter
