"Angels Look Like Devils" is the oldest song from "High Noon." I remember the idea coming on during a trance-like state in the fall of 1998. I was living in the dorms at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the time, and when I wasn't glued to my acoustic guitar, I would indulge my habit of walking through downtown alleys on rainy El Niño nights.
The lyrics for "Angels Look Like Devils" formed somewhere between those dark streets and my subconscious. I remember playing the song's opening riff on acoustic guitar for long stretches in my dorm room, hypnotizing myself with it. The first two verses in the song poured out during one of those stretches, and I remember looking down at the scribbles on the back of a used napkin thinking, "where in hell did this come from?"
I ended up putting the napkin in a manilla envelope that I kept stuffed with scraps of songs and poems and other writings, and it stayed there tucked away for nearly two years. Later, I started recording early versions of the material on "High Noon." I had about a dozen songs sketched out when I found a drum loop that matched the mood and groove of "Angels Look Like Devils" perfectly. I was hooked by the rhythmic feel of that drumbeat, so I dug out the napkin and put the song together.
The process took months. The song originally had an entirely different chorus and bridge, both of which steered its mood into a dramatically different direction. But I feel like the first recording of "Angels" succeeded in conveying the integrity of the song's spirit. And like many of the other early recordings, there was something intriguingly primitive captured within it, like a candid snapshot taken of an idea's first bloom. |
