Track-by-Track: Wine & Warpaint’s Brandon O’Neill Discusses ‘Disassociate’

As a band, Wine & Warpaint has started from a clear position of strength with their debut full-length album Disassociate. The album, released in June of last year, is an ambitious introduction to the band’s signature style of music. They combine juicy hooks, punk rock attitude, and genre-defying sound. The album is intended to speak to the human experience, combining heavy, relatable themes. Led by primary songwriter Brandon O’Neill, the album touches on themes of loss, deconstruction, and a paradoxical commitment to hope. It’s a very human release with obviously very relatable topics.

Although Disassociate is Wine & Warpaint’s debut album, they are hardly new to the scene. They have been fine-tuning their sound now over the course of three EPs and a covers album. O’Neill works closely with his bandmates, Taylor Bess, Colleen Christman, Hunter Glotz, and Hannah Haupt. Collectively, they are able to create this rich and dynamic soundscape, emphasizing a band that is quite certain of what they are doing.

O’Neill joins us today for the exclusive Track-by-Track rundown of Disassociate. He discusses at length how he wrote this exceptional collection of songs.

1. “The View’s So Good With Your Head In The Ground”

“I love opening tracks on albums because you can take it in so many different directions. For our debut full-length, I wanted to create an overture that signalled the flavours of the album: a dissonant verse chord progression that gives way to a classic pop punk chorus, a stripped back interlude with a snarky spoken word section that never goes back into the chorus… It just descends into the dissociation that guides the thematic arc of the album, blending right into the next track Static and leaving you with an intentionally chaotic and disjointed prelude.

“The music video for this track features the band performing in front of projections of world news headlines, juxtaposed with choruses of swirling colours representing our chosen ignorance to the pain around us. One of the headlines describes a ‘Monroe Park Shooting,’ which happened at one of our local high school graduations. The closing scene of the video takes place in Monroe Park, and the line ‘I might hear a flat line give a new orphan greeting’ is accompanied by a point in the direction of the local hospital.”

2. “Static”

“How do you write a song about not feeling anything? If that song is cathartic and fun and catchy, does it take away from the impact, or is there significance in the juxtaposition?

“I literally sat on my couch one day and thought, ‘What is depression like?’ and the image that came to mind was old analog static, stuck in my chest and obscuring the true emotion beneath. This was the first song written for the new album and set the direction of what I’d call our ‘signature sound,’ the home base for our sonic exploration.”

3. “Codify”

“I hate social media. It’s a wasteland of disingenuous cash grabs, trends with no substance, and opportunities for unhealthy comparison. It’s where art goes to die.

“I knew on an album about disassociation, I had to have a social-media-hate-track, and this one is full of robot voices and arpeggiated synths that give way to a pop punk fury of a bridge that calls us to go outside and reconnect with ourselves. It’s also the first extended feature of Colleen’s vocals, and features a nifty harmonized guitar tapping part.”

4. “Bad Nihilist”

“Colleen and I co-wrote this song on a baritone electric guitar (you can really hear the low tones in the bridge). It was one of the last songs we wrote for the album when we were trying to hammer home a more straightforward rock sound–ironically, the album was feeling too eclectic.

“Colleen and I are best friends, and that friendship inspired the main idea: even when we’re at our lowest of lows, neither of us can shake our optimism and our connection to our friends. Even if we ‘want’ to give up, we can’t.”

5. “I Don’t Mind”

“I write a lot of songs about my interior world and my emotions, but not a whole lot about what I actually think. And I always feel like I can’t find a strong point to give my opinions; I’m too empathetic, I see all sides too easily, I’m pragmatic and solution-oriented, which means my opinions aren’t super tweetable. The first verse tackles all that in a way that felt cathartic and aggressive.

“The second verse actually takes aim at a topic I feel well equipped to speak on, which is fundamentalist Christian belief (the phrase ‘truth in love’ is often used in Christian circles to justify saying shitty things to people, usually LGBT+ people). I wanted to call out some bullshit but also emphasize that the pattern of only associating with likeminded people denies the beauty of our humanity and leads us to further ruin.”

6. “Bring Me Back”

“This song is a love letter to the friends, spouses, partners, and family members who love people who struggle with depression. They are our lifelines, our tethers to the real world, and sometimes they’re the only thing that keeps us from going past the brink. The ending of the song has a voicemail from my wife, Scottie, telling me how much she loves me.

“Musically, this is our foray into the oversaturated world of punk, trap, and pop crossover, while trying to keep tethered to our own sound as best we can. This song has some of the biggest track stacks on the album, with multiple percussion loops, choral stacks, and guitar layers throughout.”

Wine & Warpaint ‘Disassociate’ album artwork

7. “Disassociate”

“This is the only track that all five of us wrote together. We spent a day in Taylor’s studio with nothing but a blank ProTools file and a general direction. This song is wild and different, but particularly special because it has all of our hands in it. It also features all five of our vocals: Taylor and Hannah sing the ‘oos’ in the first half, and Colleen and Hunter harmonize the echoes in the second half.

“I love avant-garde pieces that could never be singles, that either become people’s favourite track or least favourite track, and I knew I wanted a strong halfway marker for the record, something that signalled and alluded to the pending resolution. ‘It’ll all be over soon’ alludes to the upcoming track ‘Is It Over’ as well as the literal end to the album. This is also the first time we hear the musical motif that is repeated in the bridge of ‘Bloodthirst’ as well as the closing symphonic track ‘Synchrony.’”

8. “Shattered”

“Hannah and I wrote ‘Shattered’ after losing a friend who took his own life. It’s the ultimate act of disassociation, and not one we ever wanted to experience. Writing it was cathartic, and hopefully, it helps facilitate a communal experience for anyone else going through something similar.

“Sonically, it’s one of my favourites on the record, with probably my favourite drum part on the album in verse two, and the catharsis of the ⅞ breakdown over screamed vocals heading into the final chorus.”

9. “Is It Over”

“This was the other song Colleen and I co-wrote, notably marked by us almost completely sharing lead vocal duties. This was another song that came at the end of the album process, as the transition from the desperation of ‘Shattered’ into the hopeful optimism of ‘Feel the Heat’ felt too jarring. Sometimes you need to stay in the emotional valley a little longer than you or your friends think. Sometimes optimism comes on too strong and has the opposite effect. This track is our wallow song, because sometimes that’s exactly what you need.”

10. “Feel the Heat”

“At age 29, I had a stroke, caused by a congenital heart problem. I was in the hospital for four days, wore a heart monitor for a month, and had heart surgery to fix the issue. It was weird and jarring and disorienting, but left me feeling grateful and alive.

“It made me want to write the biggest, loudest, most bombastic zest for life song I could think of, and ironically, ‘Feel the Heat’ was already written and recorded. Lines meant for metaphor now have a beautiful double meaning: ‘I don’t know the first thing about feeling anything,’ ‘the biggest fight is the one inside your head,’ and ‘just for a minute feel the heat again.’ This song is unbridled hope and aggressive optimism, and aptly features the first breakdown in our band’s history.”

11. “Bloodthirst”

“This is the epic culmination of the record, our attempt to make the biggest sounding, most summative arena-rock-meets-pop-punk closer. It calls out the dissonances between us and maps a path to ‘subversive synchrony’ which is meant to serve as the antonym to disassociation. Notably, the thrust here is not to change or alter our bloodthirst, but to redirect it, ‘all our hatred is set against the things that break us.’ Instead of hating each other or ourselves, we can hate the things that divide us, that keep us from love.”

12. “Synchrony”

“I’m as obsessed with closing tracks as I am with opening ones, and decided our send-off would be a genre-bending orchestral piece that contains callbacks to the other songs on the record before repeating the refrain from Bloodthirst. This track features violin, cello, piano and flute, euphonium, tenor saxophone, oboe, guitars, trumpet, Moog Grandmother, and French horn. My sister, Mary Melissa Lane, sings the refrains from the previous songs.”