intro by Adam Cecil
I’ve known the members of Morning Comes Early for a long time. In fact, I was the manager of David, Patrick, and Jeff’s middle school band The Almosts (later renamed Kevlar Tuxedo). While the line-up has shifted throughout the years, these boys have been playing music together for over a decade. It shows on their latest release, Vision Quest EP. This is their tightest release by far — the songs fit together like puzzle pieces, even when they’re exploring different facets of their sound.
Take a listen. If you like pop punk or have any level of angst, you’ll probably enjoy it.
The title of the EP stems from an inside joke, so I thought it was only appropriate to ask the boys of Morning Comes Early to look into their own mind’s eye and take us on a vision quest through the songs on Vision Quest EP.
Tip Tip
Harry Llewellyn Schroeder IV, Bass guitar
Uh, I wrote this song and I recorded a demo of it on a bunch of pirated software.
Erase
David Atkins, Guitar / Vocals
I'm not sure how well I'll be able to articulate it — even though it's a feeling all of us have felt at some point, to an extent. Succinctly put, Erase is about a tough breakup, one that the other person doesn't seem too torn-up about. It doesn't make any sense, and it hurts, to put so much into a relationship, only to realize that the other person simply wasn't as invested as you were, and they move on right away. And any time you see her, it strikes a nerve. A cut reopened bleeds.
Brooklyn
Patrick Infurna, Vocals
Brooklyn is a song we wrote to kind of take a different approach to our sound. Harry had written that song a really long time ago and it was always one of those songs that we would listen to even before it had any lyrics or any real arrangement, just on Harry’s Soundcloud. It’s funny, we actually had a big debate on whether or not to put this song on the EP and I’m really glad we didn’t put it on the back burner for one of the others. Lyrically, it’s a transitional song; it represents a point in my life where I was moving in both body and in mind. I was in a new place, I was meeting new people, I was falling for someone, someone that made me feel really central and focused and at home. This song makes me feel relaxed, which I think is a big contrast to the energy of our other songs, so this is a personal favorite of mine.
Civil War
Patrick Infurna, Vocals
Civil War is another one where we just did something different. We grew up playing with hardcore bands and listening to hardcore bands but we’ve never really been a hardcore band. This song is a lot of things: it’s a tribute to a style of music that we adore but don’t usually play. It’s such a perfect song for our live sets because we can just stop everything and go absolutely nuts for a second. We can have a show where everyone’s just nodding along or we can have a show where people are piling all over the place, but no matter the energy, when this song is played live everything goes up a level. We had recorded this really poorly at a friend’s years ago, but we knew that it had to be redone because it’d become such a staple in our live sets. Lyrically, I think this song is really special. We get caught up singing about a lot of things that maybe don’t matter – I mean they matter to us – but this song really hits the larger issues that we as a band aren’t always outwardly thinking about. This song tackles political issues close to us and the themes we see in the political atmosphere: greed, violence, all of that. But the second part of this song is a little more specific; we wrote those lyrics at the height of the Syrian Refugee crisis as well as the Central American migrant crisis that was buried in the news. We live in communities that are literally built by immigrants, and none of us have ever had to live the horrors of displacement. From the soccer stands to our live shows we wanted to make it clear: Refugees Welcome.
Resolve
Jeff Bruce, Drums
“Resolve” is the final track on our new EP. I wrote the music about two or three years ago. I had originally written lyrics along to it that were based on my personal encounter with being cheated on; however, the lyrics were more about moving on to the next chapter of my life rather than anger towards my ex. When I finally got the song to a place I was happy with structurally, I gave Patrick the reigns to the song lyrically because I feel that his lyric writing is far better than mine. His lyrics describe the winter “tour” (three-day road trip, essentially) that we went on with local hardcore band Get A Grip, as well as reflecting back on the past, most noticeably referencing Sharkfest (Group of kids / punk as hell / screaming out in grange hall heaven). I, of course, can really connect with this song because it describes all of the thing that we as a band have done in the past five to six years (and ten or so years with David and Patrick). I also see it – same as my thrown away lyrics – as a song about moving onto the next chapter as a band. This EP is different for us and we have tried things that we never would have been comfortable with two or three years ago. I think this album is a fitting conclusion to this EP, as it signals a new direction for this band.