Returning to the ever-evolving landscape of screamo and emotional hardcore, To Be Gentle once again brings forth a raw and resonant offering that beckons us into its intricate emotional soundscape. Its latest release, “CGDGBD A#FCFAC,” is a concise collection of songs that bridges past works with future explorations, blending screamo’s sharp edges with post-rock’s expansive vistas and the emotional swells that defy genres.
Eve Beeker, the creative force behind TO BE GENTLE, describes the significance of the title “CGDGBD A#FCFAC,” which mirrors the tunings used throughout the project.
“CGDGBD being used on the first two songs and A#FCFAC being used on the third. They are essentially the same, as far as the intervals between each string and how they perform. A#FCFAC is just a whole step down from CGDGBD, and CGDGBD is a whole step down from DAEAC#E, the tuning I used for the very first To Be Gentle release and the s/t. To me, the tuning is important for various reasons.”
Initially sparked by the single “Cornelius’ Birthday,” the EP grew organically as Eve re-recorded and remixed, eventually adding two more tracks.
The artwork for the EP, a collaborative drawing with their partner, encapsulates the essence of the music and the personal bonds that inspire it.
“The rabbit is the piece they drew, and the ghosts are something I drew. Later they added the stars and sparkles, and I wrote the numbers 143 last (143 meaning I Love You). The image depicts a rabbit that is dangerously close to death with its organs spilling out of its body. It is in pain and looks scared. The ghosts are surrounding it though, providing comfort and peace and community in its last few moments of life.”
Eve’s sensitivity and deep emotional connections are the lifeblood of To Be Gentle.
“My inspiration and creative energy, and my passion, as fleeting as they all may seem at times, are always present. I am very sensitive and feel things very deeply, so I find myself having a lot to say even about the mundane.”
“The world is covered and filled with inspiration, and I try my best to see and hear it in the most unexpected places. Even going outside my residence and sitting down to listen to the cars pass by and the wind they carry can be somewhat rhythmic and musical. Music is a universal language, understood by everyone and everything, and with that in mind I try to interpret my surroundings and experiences through a musical framework as frequently as I can.”
Join us in our full track by track analysis, offered by Eve below.
The Light of a Thousand Suns is a song that has more of a higher energy than what I normally do for songs. I wanted to lead in with a very ‘in-your-face’ and aggressive presence. I feel like screamo, at its basest elements, is a youthful genre with high energy and passion. I associate it heavily with summer months, which is also a youthful-feeling season. For this song I wanted to try a few new things that I sometimes think of during songwriting, but neglect later.
For example, at about the 1:12 mark where the band cuts out and only the clean guitars remain, the base chords I am using there which have been used in many other songs usually relies heavily on the open strings. There’s some open strings being played there too but I changed the chords a bit by adding different intervals and adding complexity to its shape. I think doing little things like that go a long way, and can make what you’re doing musically sound and feel less stale.
Lyrically, this song and the other two are all mostly about my connection and relationship to Cornelius, a very special stuffy that has been in my life for some time now. He has often been a source of inspiration for me, as well as comfort and happiness. He was given to me a long time ago and he has helped tremendously with my coping skills and tending to my poorer mental health at times and symptoms whenever I do experience them. To me, he is a symbol, expression, and extension of my inner child healing.
“You shine like gleaming wisps of love
Stretching star limbs embracing me
And I glow within your encircling light
My essence immolating like the words
“I love you and it wasn’t your fault”
Heavenly bodies of forgiveness
Golden sounds healing me
Like love, everlasting and bright”
These are the main lyrics. I tacked on a little bit at the end of this song that aren’t included, but they are a rip from a song I did called “Wounded”. The line is “the face of the Devil is bald and emaciated”. For Wounded, that line and the context to which it is written in, possesses an incredibly hopeless and bleak energy. The whole line from Wounded is, “the face of the Devil is bald and emancipated and I am staring him dead in the eyes when I look into the reflection of the knife”.
The use of that lyric in The Light of a Thousand Suns is not only an allusion to Wounded, but a complete inversion of it from its meaning there. Instead of feeling hopeless and depressed, and looking at the spitting image/reflection of the Devil and all that is horrible, I am looking at the Devil but he is weakened and withered, aged and in poor health. I feel much stronger, regulated, and grounded these days and healed from much of my past.
So to me in that song, I am perhaps metaphorically and poetically looking down at the Devil (the Devil being the personification of my past), since I am stronger emotionally, mentally, and physically than I once was before.
Cornelius’ Birthday was the original song that inspired the rest. It is a tribute to him, as the anniversary of his entry into my life was not too long ago. I am really big on gift-giving, it is a symbol of my care and passion for others. Being a musician, I have gifted and given songs to my friends and family for their birthdays or as presents for other occasions. And since Cornelius himself was a gift, I thought it would only be fitting to write a song for him, a gift in itself.
A noteworthy part of the song is the end with the chorus of reverse guitars and ambient swells. I feel that reverse guitar is heavily associated in our communities with midwest emo and more twinkly emo/screamo. Although TBG tapped into those sounds and feelings heavily on the s/t, they are not my favorite, however, for whatever reason I felt that the ending part really wrapped up the song nicely, like a bow on a present of sorts.
“Cornelius! It is your birthday
I love you
And I hope that today is a day you can feel like yourself
And be surrounded by those who love you
This is what I say:
I need you and you are my best friend
Without you I feel lesser than
And you just know the right ways to make me smile
Even now as I write this, I feel this love
You are the blood in my veins
And I am the stuffing in your plushie skin
These were always love songs
And I am honored I can dedicate this one to you
I will always love you”
Everlasting is another song about Cornelius. This one had more of the blackgaze/atmospheric black metal style that I really enjoy and have used more liberally in later TBG releases. I just wanted a big feeling/sounding song.
There’s big feelings present here and I feel they are personified through this song. Everything is saturated in reverb. The drums have a reverb plugin in its signal chain are even going into a separate drum bus with another reverb plugin on that single chain. Reverb on drums, in that amount, are really fun.
The snare really pops and the way it echoes afterwards is nice to me. The cymbals get more washy and drowned out, which I think adds a textural layer and interesting timbre to the piece. The kick also gets fatter and wider, adding to that “huge” sound.
For the guitars I am using reverb and delay after distortion, but they also go into multiple busses with reverb on those as well. In the mix there are two guitars in the middle, two on each side for the standard distorted ones, and then 4 panned soft left and right and 4 others panned a bit further left and right. They all add to this sort of evolving, cascading and emotional sounding wall of reverb. There are also multiple bass tracks to help out with this.
I would like to keep the lyrics for this song secret for now. There is some English being spoken on this song but most of the lyrics are being spoken in a constructed language I have been working on. Language is special to me and I have many thoughts on it and kind of the philosophy of it in my life and art. As kids, my twin and I had a language of sorts that we would use with one another. It wasn’t completely fleshed out, but there are words and phrases we said that helped convey things in the moment that only made sense to us.
Everlasting uses that language as a baseline. Lately I have been adding to it and attempting to make it more sophisticated with the help of books and collected research on the topics of constructed language. I’m hoping to develop it fully soon.
The lyrics are intentionally incredibly hard to hear on this song, lowered in the mix and covered in reverb.
Although the words and feelings that I wanted to say on this song have been mapped out and fully constructed linguistically, there is an element of privacy I’d like to maintain with such a vulnerable and intimate topic, even if the listener cannot understand what I am saying.
