You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Churches is a trio from Glasgow, Scotland.
In this episode, they break down the song Clearest Blue from their sophomore album Every Open Eye.
You'll hear the band's original demo,
as well as why they start songs with a set of rules, but then quickly abandon those rules.
This interview was recorded live at the Dropbox podcast studio at South by Southwest.
I'm Martin and I play keys and stuff.
I'm Lauren and I sing.
I'm Ian and I also play keys and stuff.
We were trying to make a laid-back song, weren't we?
Honestly, I swear, I swear.
That's the thing about this band, though.
We always set out with rules, and then we're useless at sticking to them.
The other rule for this song was, let's do a song with two chords.
And of course, ten minutes later, Martin's off on another, you know, the minor.
We're terrible at sticking to rules,
but that's the fun part, is creating boundaries and then smashing them.
You have these reference points and rules, as Ian says,