Music duo The World Is Not Round offer a track breakdown of their sprawling new album Speechless.
Sometimes an album is so transfixing that it warrants a closer look. Such is the case for Speechless, the expansive new album from duo The World Is Not Round.
Across ten stellar tracks, the Filipino-Australian musicians offer their dazzling take on 2000s/10s indie music, with staggering results.
Below, we caught up with the duo for a track-by-track guide through Speechless, from songs that “required three years to perfect” to tracks that “feel like flying in the clouds.”
Catch the full track breakdown below, and scroll down to listen to The World Is Not Round’s new album Speechless.
Spiralling
The album opens with an upbeat track that delves into a profound sense of disconnection and internal struggle. This song, which required three years to perfect and sets the tone for the entire album – an emotional rollercoaster.
Fabricator
This song delves into the theme of placing unwarranted trust in others and exposing one’s vulnerability.
It explores the emotional repercussions of being shaped and manipulated, urging a liberation from the stifling influence of an individual capable of dictating and distorting how others perceive you.
What I Used To Be
The title speaks for itself. This song feels like flying in the clouds, but soon comes crashing down and confronted by repercussions of the terrible choices being made in the past.
I used to think of the saying, “tomorrow’s me will solve tomorrow’s problems”, but these days I guess it’s “tomorrow’s problems can be avoided by today’s me”. If only we can turn back time.
Impending Doom
The perfect connection to the previous track. They say “loneliness is the playground of the devil” and that playground gave birth to Impending Doom.
It’s like a salad for misery and paranoia during life’s toughest moments. I remember writing this song and having suicidal thoughts. It was beautiful and dark at the same time.
Things I Can’t Change
The slowest most ballad-y song in the album. Another one of those “the title speaks for itself”. It was a mellow Wednesday afternoon, I came home from the chaos of work and sat down sipping on cranberry juice on my balcony.
Suddenly the following words hit me: There is no such thing as control. I then grabbed my notebook and started writing the whole song.
Mind Eraser
You could tell this song is about the dangers of alcohol but it also says something about being in too deep with everything you’re going through that you sometimes forget where you are in your life.
Shibuya Incident
Japan’s culture of not being emotionally open resonates with me a lot.
It’s that feeling of you want to speak out what you feel, but you’re being shunned by others as they perceive you as “weird” or they’re just too busy thinking about themselves and not interested in you.
There’s also that feeling where I blamed myself with all the crappy things that were happening all at once. Shibuya is a place where lots of people, things, and emotions converge and we felt it perfectly describes the emotions going through this song.
Dreaming
There was this period where I had the same dream every night. It wasn’t a bad dream, but I kept remembering it every time I am leaning my head on the window of the train commuting to work.
These were really fascinating moments because the melody of the chorus is always playing in my head whenever I kept remembering the same dream. Lo and behold, I turned it into a song.
Crispy Fried Chicken
My first year of moving to Sydney was a struggle of missing home and missing my loved ones. At the same time, I also wanted to meet other artists and musos in the area to gaze into what Sydney’s music scene is.
Joined a band a year after and started writing songs with my mates. Every time we write the skeleton of the songs, I would always say, “It’s not Golden Brown yet”.
I guess it’s how I appreciate great food and also birthed the anthem of deciding to leave something or someone after trying to think about it too much. These decisions are hard.
Fraud
The hardest song to write. I spent 52 revisions trying to come up with a way on how to convey the emotions of “Fraud”. It’s basically what Imposter Syndrome is in one song.
After spending four years and a half writing this whole album, I stumbled upon the notion of “who am I to write a whole album?”
It was that time where I started to question myself why am I making music after a whirlwind of experiences I had over the past five years.
The song is supposed to be the first track of the album, but we then decided to put it at the end so that you get a plethora of emotions from track one to track nine and then ending it with “Dafuq?”.
It’s like dipping your head, staring into the abyss and by the time you pull it back out, you say: “What the fuck?”, and end up speechless.
