Anna Flyaway

Anna Flyaway (pre-Empire! Empire!) unearth lost LP for release (stream a track)

Before the now-defunct Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) became one of the key bands of the first wave of the emo revival, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Keith Latinen led the band Anna Flyaway, which Keith started in 2005 as a solo project and which eventually became a six-piece band. They recorded an album, but quietly broke up before releasing it, and now Keith has “retrieved the files from his ancient laptop” and he’s finally giving the LP a proper release. It’s called Tomorrow I Will Take a Knife to Your Confidence, and it was newly mixed by Mat Halliday (Empire! Empire!, Fireworks) and mastered by Dave Downham (Beach Slang, Into It. Over It.). We’re premiering the song “Every Time You Breathe In, You Breathe out (And Then, One Day, You Won’t),” and if you like Empire! Empire! — or the bands that inspired them like Mineral, American Football, Knapsack, The Promise Ring, etc — you’re probably gonna like this immediately. It has that instantly satisfying sound that this style of emo always has when it’s done right. Here’s what Keith tells us about this song:

This song is about a series of situations I went through with my roommates in college that over time, ended my relationships with them and culminated with me moving out of our shared house. To this day, we have never made amends. At the time, I was really pissed at them for not seeing my side of the situation or sympathizing with me. In truth, our relationships had already been irreparably damaged, so we should have never moved in together in the first place. I think we were all hopeful that things could go back to the way they were, or maybe start anew. Or maybe they just needed another roommate, as the house was big and a lot of people = cheaper rent.

Thinking about this song lyrically is a really out-of-body experience because I stopped writing this way midway through Empire! Empire!’s tenure. From my advanced age (I just turned 37!), I want to believe that I would never have written songs as a personal attack or aired my dirty laundry out online, but alas!- I would be wrong to believe such a thing. I even kept my LiveJournal as proof, lol. The lyrics of all my younger works were mostly petty and vindictive, but written in a way that only I or the people the song was about would know. Or maybe they wouldn’t ever know and I would privately hold that over them.

The album is coming out on November 22 via Keith and Cathy Latinen’s label Count Your Lucky Stars. Stream the new song and check out the full tracklist below…

Tracklist
1. Make Me Young, Make Me Young, Make Me Young, Make Me Young
2. Every Time You Breathe In, You Breathe out (And Then, One Day, You Won’t)
3. My Brother Thinks I’m a Ghost
4. The Low Light Before Dawn
5. You Were a Pride of Lions
6. All Great and Precious Things Are Lonely
7. Her Color Blue
8. Of Course I Was Sad to See You Go