Scott Gagner has a classic pop-rock sound that follows in the footsteps of greats like Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson, and his latest single is no different. Today we have the premiere of that song, “How Low Can You Go,” which comes off of Gagner’s latest LP Pins and Needles.
The lushly-arranged track has a slow-to-mid-tempo pace and alternated male/female vocals in the verses over a bass-heavy rock track. Like many other songs on Gagner’s new album, “How Low Can You Go” includes guest performances from artists like Ken Stringfellow of The Posies (as well as the reformed version of Big Star and REM), drummer Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello’s band The Attractions, and Michael Urbano, who has been in Todd Rundgren’s band, Paul Westerberg’s band and Sheryl Crow’s band.
“‘How Low Can You Go?’ was written during my Warren Zevon obsession,” said Gagner. “I was inspired by his use of pitch-black humor and non-autobiographical subject matter. The popular limbo song ‘How Low Can You Go’ popped into my head one day while taking a shower, and by the time I was finished, so was the song. I love taking old colloquialisms and twisting them until they mean something new and different. In this case, the character is continually wondering how far they’ll fall, eventually ending up in an armed standoff with the police at a liquor store.”
The song is an important touchstone in the recording of his new album — it was the first song Gagner recorded for Pins and Needles, “playing all the parts myself. It was originally supposed to sound more like ‘Allentown’ by Billy Joel, but I ended up taking most of the pianos out to let it breathe. That let the bass line jump to the fore, making it more bouncy than I’d envisioned.”
“The vocals were very important for this song,” said Gagner, elaborating on the creative process. “I knew I didn’t want the listener to hear it as a confessional singer-songwriter song, so I filtered my vocals through numerous Vocoder effects, eventually stacking three different Vocoder tracks together to get a trippy, detached lead vocal. Then I asked Ken Stringfellow to sing harmonies on it, which he nailed as always. Lastly, and most importantly, I turned it into a call-and-response song by replacing all my response vocals with vocals by the brilliant Omega Rae. She’s like a one-woman Pointer Sisters, stacking four vocal tracks in 20 minutes.”
Any questions about what this song is all about? Ask no further than Gagner himself: “The end result is a darkly humorous, soulful yet robotic, piano and bass-driven song about a character falling apart.”
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