RAILROAD TO METROPOLIS

The first Extended Play

You can listen to the EP above. Or:
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Sometime early on in their careers, the Sunsetters had a song they'd written that didn't fit on any of their albums. It was written during the big Summer Sucks - We Excavate era, two albums with distinct moods and that called for specific kinds of songs, and by the time those albums were done they still had no idea what to do with this thing. So they released it as an EP (you know what an EP is, right? Like an album but much shorter, or like a single but quite a bit longer). And that's what this is, Railroad to Metropolis. I'm pretty sure, in the Fiction, the disc they released just had the one song on it, but here in the real world I wanted to include the Arrival movement isolated, for those who want to hear the music a little better.

"Railroad to Metropolis" is a single 20-minute song telling a self-contained horror story, something of a gothic horror about a small-town woman named Sienna going to the big city. It has nine movements which stay mainly in the key of B major (except an extended foray into A) and explore a few intensities on the spectrum of rock-to-metal. It is, simply, a Sunsetters song. The actual composition, by Lindsay and I, took a while as this song was generally on the backburner for us, but one of the central ideas is "it's just Sunsetters, no frills, one last pure midi song," as this song comes at the end of the Classic Era in the discography. After this, it's No Entry and all that comes next, where the band's lineup starts changing, and the context of the music necessitates some more creative post-production. So one can consider Railroad to be a big summation, the grand finale of the early albums.

Railroad Art

A distant skyline of strange buildings.

This piece comes from the website of RealaChao, who I've collaborated with a lot on art before, mainly for Rapture. I saw this piece on her website while writing the music, and was struck by it, so I received her permission to pair it with the EP. I love her damn art. I love art in general, man.

Railroad to Metropolis
i- Shining Sunset Sienna | ii- Departure (The Train) | iii- Heading Somewhere Very Fast | iv- Intransient | v- Here Never City Said | vi- Arrival (The City) | vii- Sienna Goodnight | viii- City of Towers | ix- Departure (Grand Finale)

Uh. Let's go movement-by-movement this time. The individual movements are quite snappy, not all too complex, but there are a lot of them.

i- Shining Sunset Sienna

Cozy intimate introduction, establishing the central area the sound will stay in, and also the recurring chorus melody. Everybody in the band warms up.

Sienna has lived in her small town all her life, watching everyone else go and all the tourists pass through. She's been content this way. But over time, her soul has of course yearned to wander, longed to see what lies beyond her own horizon. One day she buys a ticket and waits at the train station, and as the train pulls in, she only now realizes something curious: In all this time, she's never actually seen or heard a train arrive or leave this station.

ii- Departure (The Train)

Big grand proggy marching-drum opening, complete with brass synth.

If this were a movie, this is where the title credits would go, over shots of the train rolling across a landscape of too many train tracks.

iii- Heading Somewhere Very Fast

Guitar riff and a slight rock groove.

While of course the novelty of speed excites Sienna, her thrill fades faster than she'd expected as she starts to wonder where this train is going.

iv- Intransient

Chugging doom metal returning to the central key signature.

The view out the window is smoggy factories and technology foreign to her. She observes the other train passengers: they're all men identically dressed in suits, holding newspapers before them as if this is what adult humans do. Are their faces all the same too..?
That's when one of them lowers his newspaper, looks at Sienna, and grins.

v- Here Never City Said

Dark bouncing singalong, like some villain song in a musical. Develops and closes Intransient, brings us to a stop.

The man says some strange things to her, of a metropolis forever under construction, of technology overreaching the land, of an empire of metal. He talks to her like he's not human. He scares her. And privately, she looks back on her life, and she realizes only now that while she's looked at many maps, she's never heard of any city where they're going.
And then the train pulls in at the station.

vi- Arrival (The City)

Gradual growing instrumental, at first curious, then twists into tragedy, and builds into a full-band groove. With spoken-word on top.

The city seems fine...
The people are normal...
The coffee tastes good!
That man was just trying to scare her!
Really, now!

And that's when a crowd of people insert electric plugs into their arms and fall to the ground.
And that's when a TV on wheels rolls up to her, and she's grabbed from behind, and someone sticks a plug in her too.

Her brain is rewritten as she sleeps.

vii- Sienna Goodnight

Reprise of first movement, in a more theatrical style, taking us from intimate organ chords to a pleasant kind of acoustic band piece.

Sienna wakes up in a bed in the city, as if she's always been there. She thinks nothing of it. She loves looking at the sunrise as it reflects on all the shining metal towers. God, she loves this city. For a moment, a distant memory, a last pang of humanity, wakes up inside her and wonders what's happened to her. But that doesn't last long. All she wants now is the city. All she wants to do is build the city.

viii- City of Towers

Reprise of movements 4 and 5 in a much faster thrash metal mode. Doom, determination, then noodling guitars and an explosive sudden stop.

And that's what she does. She builds the city, out of metal and bone. She lines rooves with human hands, like gargoyles, to symbolize the divine urge to reach to the sky and touch God. We will build, and we will touch God.

ix- Departure (Grand Finale)

Reprise of movement 2, now with finality. Drums go from organic to robotic.

There are lots more train tracks across the country now than there were before. And a new line of trains rolls out, going to more and more towns.

I'm pretty happy with Railroad. It manages to stand distinct, and as a 20-minute song it's constructed well enough. It's narrative-driven, and despite the story that could be quite horrifying, honestly the song itself is pretty cute. It's a portrait of a band that understand each other quite well and want to tell some stories.

As an EP, Railroad is arguably optional in the discography, and it's certainly okay to get to it at any random point. But it fits where it is, chronologically, as a triumphant closer to an era. And it serves the purpose of just.. giving the listener more Sunsetters music if they want it. That's really what EPs are about.