The short answer is an emphatic yes. More than a half-decade after their breakthrough debut album, Snowden has returned and the extended wait has proven resoundingly worth it. No One In Control is a remarkable collection, lit with impassioned creativity and coruscating emotional power. Jeffares – the multi-talented mind behind Snowden – toiled for almost six years, pushing himself and his music ever closer to madness, and that hermetic intensity can be heard in the record’s every finely etched facet. From the syrupy pulsebeats of “So Red” to the nihilistic euphoria of the first single, “The Beat Comes,” Snowden has crafted a vivid portrait of obsession and isolation, of gut-wrenching doubt and ultimate redemption. With its seamless integration of haunting melodies, rhythmic ingenuity, and hypnagogic songcraft, No One In Control sees Snowden’s artistry and ambition ascending to hitherto untouched new heights.
Snowden emerged in 2004 and were soon hailed as one of the Atlanta underground’s leading new artists, with MTV linking the band alongside Deerhunter and Black Lips as avatars of the burgeoning scene. Released in 2006, Anti-Anti fully delivered upon the band’s promise, earning worldwide popular success and critical applause for its enigmatic blend of deep grooves and post punk atmospherics. Snowden toured hard, building a fervent fan following via innumerable headline dates and shows alongside the likes of Arcade Fire and Kings of Leon.
But just as Snowden prepared their next move, Jeffares found himself entangled in contract dispute that put the kibosh on whatever career momentum he had gained. Trapped in legal limbo, he eased back into the life of a starving artist, subletting and setting up studios wherever he landed, from Chicago to Atlanta to New York. In due time, Jeffares had begun constructing a boldly beautiful song cycle inspired by the seclusion.
“I was always paranoid about writing ballads. In a bout of writer’s block I let one through.”
He ended up writing quite a few, though unsurprisingly, “they were all a little bit twisted.” Songs
like “Don’t Really Know Me” and the title track were marked by romantic pessimism and cynical seclusion, their introspective exploration buoyed by Jeffares’ tricky unification of Anti-Anti’s spellbinding shoegaze melodics with ebullient Big Beat and Madchester-inspired rhythms.
“I didn’t want my stuff to have that swarm this time,” he says. “I wanted it to have more kick to it. I was always trying to balance that. It’s a hard line to walk."
Time marched on as Jeffares spent countless all-nighters in the studio, tinkering away on the record while also trying to find it a good home. Night after night, he would question his previous evening’s efforts, gutting songs then rebuilding them from the naked track up. The process, he admits, ended up snowballing into OCD.
“Everyone kept saying, you’ve got to stop working on this record,” Jeffares says, “but with no good way to release it, I kept tweaking it. I could’ve had a finished record at any point, it just wouldn’t have been the record that I would’ve had six months later.”
In 2011, Snowden’s old friends and tourmates Kings of Leon invited Jeffares to join forces with their newly launched Serpents & Snakes Records. With the finish line now in sight, Jeffares considered self-producing the final album, but knew that he couldn’t be objective having listened to some of these tracks more than 500 times. He reached out to producer Bill Skibbe – known for his work alongside The Kills, The Dead Weather, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Adult. – and in November, lit out for Skibbe’s Benton Harbor, Michigan studio for three weeks of sessions.
“I made the commitment that I was going to walk in and walk out with a record,” Jeffares says, “and there’s not going to be any messing with it after that.”
Having already tracked – and re-tracked – most of the album on his own, Jeffares and Skibbe spent much of their time “experimenting” with guitar textures and vocal arrangements. Longtime Snowden drummer Chandler Rentz came in to lay down an array of taut rhythms and clattering beats based on the original programming.
“Bill helped me figure out better ways to get some sounds,” Jeffares says, “more ways to get emotion in the recordings. I’d been messing with these tracks for so long there wasn’t a lot to do to most of them.”
Indeed, No One In Control is a remarkably detailed and visceral work, Jeffares’ infinite adventurism resulting in a fully realized aural universe in each individualistic track. With its complex architecture and inverted bursts of entropic energy, the epic title piece stands out as a tour de force of incandescent psychedelia and lacerating self-examination. Other milestones include a stark take on Love & Rockets’ “No Words No More” (first heard on 2009’s New Tales To Tell tribute) and the elegiac finale, “This Year,” which closes the album with surprising delicacy and hope. Upon completing the sessions, Jeffares held true to his initial promise to himself and pulled away from the material he’d been obsessing over for the better part of a decade.
“I can’t,” he says. “I can’t listen to it at all. I accidentally heard a track the other day and realized there was a backing vocal missing. I was like, ‘No. I’ve got to let it go.’”
Now based out of Austin, Jeffares is preparing for No One In Control’s long awaited release by solidifying Snowden’s intricate live presentation, the present line-up comprised of players assembled during his last stay in New York City. But for the most part, he has spent the past year recharging his creative batteries, “trying to live a life not centered around music.”
That said Jeffares recently set up a studio, determined to begin the next Snowden album before hitting the road hard in 2013. Ever eager to push his music’s own far-flung boundaries, he suggests future efforts will be more beat heavy and electronic in nature. One thing is certain, however: the arrival of the astonishingly affective No One In Control represents the culmination of a difficult and risky chapter for Snowden as well as the proverbial new beginning for Jordan Jeffares himself.
Anti-Anti
Snowden Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And blur the questions that no one could ever answer
I empty my head of all that I know
Seems like the best view is the one from below
We are anti-movements, we are anti-anti
One time we believed but now we don't even try
And I can't cut a rug, without my fashion drugs
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
You say there's nothing wrong but I don't hear it
You say there's nothing wrong but I don't hear it
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
I will burn your love letters in a parking deck
Where I have harbored great things that I will never confess
We keep fresh paint on the countenance
Now we keep it simple but make it more complex
We are anti-movements, we are anti-anti
One time we believed but now it's passé and cliché
And she'll say anything to make you move again
But is it the truth? I don't care if it is
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
You say there's nothing wrong but I don't hear it
You say there's nothing wrong but I don't hear it
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
The opening lines of Snowden's "Anti-Anti" set a darkly surrealistic tone for the song. The line "I huff gasoline from your shirt" creates a jarring image, suggesting that the singer is inhaling fumes from someone else's clothing. This could be interpreted in a few ways - perhaps the singer is literally snorting gasoline, or perhaps they are using the image of huffing gasoline as a metaphor for feeling overwhelmed by another person's presence. The following lines "And blur the questions that no one could ever answer / I empty my head of all that I know" suggest a sense of confusion or uncertainty. The singer is trying to escape their own thoughts by getting high, but in doing so they are also blurring reality and avoiding important questions.
The chorus of the song ("We are anti-movements, we are anti-anti / One time we believed but now we don't even try") touches on a sense of disillusionment. The singer seems to be rejecting any sort of collective ideology, whether it be political or social. They have lost faith in the idea of movements or causes, and are content to simply exist without striving for any sort of change. This feeling is reinforced by the lines "And she'll say anything to make you move again / But is it the truth? I don't care if it is." The singer is skeptical of anyone who tries to motivate them or push them towards action.
The song's opening lines and chorus suggest a sense of nihilism or hopelessness, while the verses depict the singer burnings bridges and engaging in self-destructive behavior. The lyrics "I will burn your love letters in a parking deck / Where I have harbored great things that I will never confess" suggest that the singer is trying to erase a past relationship, and perhaps harbors feelings of regret or shame about it. The line "We keep fresh paint on the countenance / Now we keep it simple but make it more complex" could be interpreted as a commentary on modern society's obsession with image and appearance - we try to keep up a facade of simplicity, but ultimately our desire for complexity and nuance ends up complicating things.
Overall, "Anti-Anti" is a song about disillusionment, confusion, and self-destruction. The singer has lost faith in any sort of collective movement or cause, and instead seeks escape through drugs and burning bridges with their past. The song's surrealistic imagery and dissociative tone emphasize the sense of disconnect that the singer feels.
Line by Line Meaning
I huff gasoline from your shirt
I find myself desperate for a way out of my reality, so much so that I am ready to huff in gasoline from a shirt that belongs to you, which will just dissociate me completely.
And blur the questions that no one could ever answer
I escape reality by indulging in activities that blur the existential questions that are basically unanswerable.
I empty my head of all that I know
I feel like unlearning everything so that I can perceive things in a new way and maybe learn something new; so I empty my mind of everything I know.
Seems like the best view is the one from below
The society that I live in values certain things, and if you do not fit the description then you are forced to look at everything from the bottom; the best view a misfit gets is looking up from below.
We are anti-movements, we are anti-anti
We do not believe in following movements or being opposed to them. We prefer creating our own path and being indifferent to what others say or do.
One time we believed but now we don't even try
We believed in some things before but over time, we just stopped trying because we eventually realized that whatever we were doing did not bring any real change.
And I can't cut a rug, without my fashion drugs
I need to take some sort of drug-like substance to escape reality, feel alive and free in my space.
Inebriation leads revelation
When I'm high, I am more likely to have deep thoughts and new insights, all thanks to the state of inebriation.
Gettin' down in the town that makes no sound
I'm at this place where I can be who I want to be or do whatever and nobody will judge me, so it's like I'm in a town that's silent to my actions.
You say there's nothing wrong but I don't hear it
You claim everything is fine, but from where I am looking it doesn't seem that way; it's like I'm not hearing the same thing as you.
I will burn your love letters in a parking deck
I will destroy your memories, all the things that we had before, and the love letters we wrote back and forth in this an empty place that denotes the end of relationships.
Where I have harbored great things that I will never confess
This parking deck is where I've hidden so many dirty secrets that I'm not willing to disclose or confess to anyone.
We keep fresh paint on the countenance
We try as much as we can to change our appearances and look good to the outside world, sometimes using a new coat of paint-like makeup to appear fresher than the reality.
Now we keep it simple but make it more complex
We try to make life simple, but I think we end up complicating things even more than before, like we can't help it.
But is it the truth? I don't care if it is
When someone is trying to make me move by saying something, I don't care if it's the truth. What's most important is how the move will change things with time.
Contributed by Keira O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@marcusflynt810
RUGBY 08!!!
@agustinalem1390
FUCK YEAH!
@reginald8947
That's what brought me here. .
@Nile15rush_fj
Rugby 08 had so many good songs. For EA sports game their soundtrack is heavily underrated
@tensazol
I listen it this in EA Rugby 2008, and i love it, awesome song, and lyrics.
@mickyle3242
Rugby 08 . Memories .
@mufasa6272
Rugby 08 🙂 good memories
@mikepdoescoke
fucking criminally underrated track til this day
@cryinglemons58
this song has a really magical feel to it
it can not fit in my head that this has so low views
@alvarogonzalez3311
It's better that way.