Trick of Time is our attempt to sound profound while grappling with the unreliable nature of memory and whether things we experience are actually real. It’s the kind of deep, contemplative track written late at night after realizing the car keys are missing. While the lyrics explore the terrifying vastness of silence and the changing emotional landscape of the past, the harmonic structure consists of four of our favorite chords repeating over and over at different speeds. We find it works best for quiet moments of existential dread, or as background music while trying to locate your lost wallet.

Trick of Time (Sethares & Marcotte)

If you stitch all the silences together
They would stretch to the moon
Secrets shared under cover of the dark
Seeds that never bloom
There are all kinds of silences
Gaping mouths in time
Where are you yesterday, hiding in plain sight

Oh oh, a trick of memory
Oh oh, a trick of time
A trick of memory

Singing in the shadows, painting without sound
The artistry of words unsaid
The kiss doesn’t feel the way it used to feel
Perhaps it never did
We long for yesterday
When love ached in our bones
The wanting brings us
To the edge of what we’ve known

Oh oh, a trick of memory
Oh oh, a trick of time
A trick of memory

Two tall strangers passing silently
Time turns on itself again
We’ve walked these streets in other lives
The same beginning, the same end
Cycles in time, everywhere we’ve been
They were, they will be, always here again

Oh oh, a trick of memory
Oh oh, a trick of time
A trick of memory