Holding Absence, 'The Greatest Mistake Of My Life' | Track By Track

yo guys how's it going this is lucas from holden absence this is a track by track of our new record the greatest mistake in my life cool so awake to be honest i view awake as little you know like a kind of little intro talent really but um we knew that celebration song needed to have just this epic powerful intro um and we started playing around with this little um this little piano organ kind of thing and we really like the idea of voices whispering um like just all these subtle kind of like ambient sounds

basically um and yeah and basically it got the point where that intro became so like powerful and profound and like i got goosebumps the first time i heard it like proper proper you know we basically decided to just kind of snip it a little bit put it like as its own little track just just because you know if anybody wanted to skip it like banging straight on the celebration song but um but it also felt like something that did deserve its own space as well a little bit uh so yeah so celebration song is one

of the first tracks we kind of worked on uh really um we took like an old demo and basically just pulled it apart for you know typical just a lot of work went into making that demo work but um i think for me the main thing to talk about here is just what what celebration song signifies within the album and what it signifies within holden absence's whole discography as well celebration song is about celebrating life in the face of death thinking about all the loved ones you've had in the past that have maybe maybe on

with you anymore or thinking about the concept of your life maybe not existing someday you know and thinking to yourself it's so important to live and enjoy life um and i i know i dabble in the sadness a lot you know obviously but um but this is this is so much more than that you know um and and the opening track the opening lyric on the album being like i'm alive it kind of i feel like sometimes it is on a little bit cheesy but i wanted it to just feel like this unquestionable statement of

emotion celebrating life and how great an album intro is that you know and um obviously most of you will probably have noticed as well like celebration song and morning song kind of sit as sister tracks really um but they look at the concept of life in the same way really but one of them is about celebrating your life the other ones about mourning the death of somebody else's and then using those two in context really yeah so kirsten with your kiss is a song that you know we i feel like we learned with the debut

just how great your lovers room in my life was you know it wasn't a single um you know but it just felt like track two being a banger that still nobody knows it could have been a single but it wasn't you know that felt like a really really cool way to kind of go in after celebration song uh so curse me was the last song that we started for the record so i don't think it was the last song that we finished but we started it pretty much a week before um and we we sat

down with dan weller and wrote that one um and like yeah i just i just think it captures a lot of what we do really well in a way that we've never done it before you know like that kind of riffy kind of like taking back sunday kind of vibe first you know or like that's sleeping with sirens kind of drum thing and and i guess compared to paramore quite a lot which is something that i really enjoyed but um i feel like you know when that that chorus kind of kicks it just it's just

it's just a moment you know it's just a real moment on on the record um and then the outro as well another one of those kind of like holding absence outros you know that is too long and too emotional for anybody's good but um yeah we just we felt like you know this album was we wanted to be quite brave you know we weren't we wanted to take chances and this felt like a perfect time to take a chance like that uh on a lyrical level as well you know this song is about basically just

somebody coming into your life and for better or worse changing it forever you know so like i let you curse me with your kiss you know it's just this idea that the second you know i we kissed that was it forever you're always a part of my life now you know wherever you are you're still a part of me you know um uh see ya so afterlife is the certified verified bop on the record you know um like a shadow really taught us how important it is to just have a song that makes you feel

like on a physical level it's just a song maybe not you know maybe we'll we'll crack on with the dance floor fillers that someday but um it's just a song that makes you want to bang your head it makes you want to move it makes you want to stomp your foot you know um and basically we started once again this is a track that we wrote with dan and this track was actually written the same time that we wrote gravity as well so um when you look back at the timeline of songs you know gravity's

been out for a long time now um and afterlife came out pretty much uh an entire year after gravity uh so that that is that is interesting at least um but uh but yeah so we just we really like the idea of having a stomper you know one two one two i can't remember there's loads of names like some one of my mates calls it like the donkey beats it's like donkey donkey you know because it's just like it's just such a such a pulse you know but we uh yeah we aimed for that and

basically the chorus just wrote itself and um i'm very grateful for that chorus writing itself uh because it's just it's such a good chorus you know um and then the rest of the song was the hard bit then some songs are easy some songs are hard some songs are really easy and then really hard and this was one of those um but yeah after a little bit of time with it as well you know sometimes it's better to let the dust settle and then start again um yeah we came up with these verses and and

the rest is history really on a lyrical level um afterlife is a song about feeling like somebody's ghost is watching over you um you know and and this is a theme that occurs quite often within this record is is death but learning from it you know grief is obviously a very hard thing this is the hardest thing on earth to go through but there's always a lesson to be learned within it um and i think that was a really poignant part of um of this song so drugs and love was like a song that i

titled most of these songs for the record most of these songs come title first lyrics second i always try and paint the picture of the album track list and then worry about all the little songs inside so so drugs and love um you know and it's quite interesting as well because drugs is nothing you know i never sing about drugs you know we're not like a most of us are straight edge you know and and we don't really it's not a world we dabble in but for me it was it was looking at this this

concept of uh when you know when when you're lonely in life um you know you there's two things that most people will turn to and it's either a poisonous love or a love for poison you know you either turn to maybe maybe even something as simple as antidepressants or something like alcoholism or whatever you know that's that's one way of kind of covering up the hole that you may have and then the other way is is kind of just moving on to love and projecting yourself on on other people and this song basically draws the

parallels between those two things um make me numb with drugs and love what'll save me from my solitude i've nothing left to turn to help me find a way to medicate you know it's basically just saying i'll take anything that will numb me whether it's drugs or love you know um so so i've always really enjoyed that kind of like concept as a lyric um yeah anyway as for the song uh i think this is the last one we we wrote with dan so these three in a row we did with dan and then the

rest i think we did without him but um this was also written after life week as well um so this song has existed for quite a while and and basically we really like the idea of just having a chuggy kind of opening you know and then kind of looked at like a death tonesy kind of verse you know yeah we really enjoyed that um as like a concept um and then the song honestly just just went from there i think i i really wanted to elevate this track with my vocals i wanted to make sure

that they were always up there so the choruses and the midsections and stuff are very just sky-high really um but i think that's kind of the point of the song really is just losing yourself in this thing so in circles there's a song i vividly vividly remember the night that we wrote this song um it was a freezing cold december evening and myself and scott had been going to the office and writing pretty much four days a week at this point we knew we were going to the studio in february and we knew we had

a lot left to do so it was while we were kind of in this period of just cracking on with the record um and yeah and basically we just we just had a vibe you know we had this drum beat the walking drum beat and we really liked the idea of like a kind of guitar part that kind of like hung like a kind of radiohead kind of vibe um and my my phone had died um so normally i'll turn to the my lyrics notes and all my notes app and i'll kind of go through

and try and try and slowly start piecing stuff together start jamming stuff together but my phone had died so i didn't have that and i remember thinking to myself what was like the last lyric that i'd written let's try and remember it let's try and work with that and then i'll go backwards um and the lyric was people just go on and on in circles and um and i think it was to me it was more it was like a commentary on the whole like people just do nothing you know it was that like life

is just boring and bleak you know um and people just go on and on in circles i had this kind of thing and and when i said to scott he was like that's really cool um and then we basically kind of decided that we should kind of base the song around the lyric so this cyclical boring um bleak nature that humanity generally has as people you know we wake up we drink coffee at the same time go to work at the same time we come home at the same time watch the same television eat the

same food go to bed it's a very very depressing and sad way of living a life you know and and it's something that so many people do you know whether they can help it or not um and we basically wanted the song to feel like that so uh you know the parts walk the drums go the bass walks you know and that that whirring sound as well um and it basically you know it was like form dictating content really it was like we won this song to be just cyclical habitual and just going round and

round in circles and um and ultimately yeah it wrote itself but i'm really proud of that song i really enjoy that so no more roses is quite a learning curve for us because what we do is try and you know you know like when when you make a puzzle you know most people do the outline of the puzzle and then work inside that's how we've always written albums you know we know what we wanted to look like and then we fill in in the missing gaps you know um so for this record we knew after

in circles we wanted something to come back in kind of like what before sleep does on on the debut um so we knew we wanted like something with uh bde you know um just to kind of elevate the song after in circles was a little bit of a lull um and no more roses just filled that hole um we've been listening to a band called holy fawn and they just have this massive wall of sound kind of vibe um so we knew we wanted to start it like that i knew i wanted to go a

little more sam carter on first verse than i normally do um we knew we wanted verse 2 to be this kind of staying on the same note vocally and on the bass you know and and it was just basically us just gathering around and it sounds really stupid but like kind of running errands doing chores i know i want this i know i'm on this this is the last chance to do it so let's put it in and no more roses was very much a song that we'd kind of written just to just to fill

all these holes in and put these things that we knew the album might have been missing in um but ultimately you know it's one of all of our favorite tracks on the record really and i think it's definitely going to become a kind of like a fan favorite really because it just does so much um so maybe we should run more errands in other songs as well yeah lyrically uh no more roses to me no more roses is like a godsend from the first album but angry um you know and i've always had this kind

of running theme where i you know i'm a i'm objective to religion and and i'm somebody who kind of um is quite voyeuristic of the whole thing but i kind of do always wish that maybe you know imagine believing in god imagine having the the privilege of just knowing it'll all be all right when you die you know and that's something that's that's always been a part of me um i grew up i came from a catholic background you know uh so i was always surrounded by religion um but a godsend is basically a song

you know that from the first album that talks about wanting god to talk to you because you're talking to god and he's not talking back you know the whistle in the wind um the message in a bottle you know it's just this idea that like you're kind of trying to to speak to god and he's not it whereas no more roses is is like i said an angrier version it's like i'm like pissed off that god isn't helping me anymore you know um whether he exists or not you know um and and it's a song

that i couple with the concept of obviously with mental illness you know um so like if there is a god why is he punishing me like this because i i'm like i'm trying i'm trying to believe but you're not giving me any any reasons you know um so that was always a very profound kind of concept that i felt like on an evolution level as well i i wanted to touch upon you know and to sum it up the closing lyric how many tear stains sonatas must i sing for you to see i never believed

in you because you never believed in me like it's this idea that like yeah everybody's supposed to believe in a god but like what if that god doesn't believe in you you know um yeah beyond belief is like the crazy cousin of this this big family you know it's like it fits in to the album and to be honest it's one of my favorite moments of this record is after no more roses finishes hearing that like is so cool you know because it's this familiar joyous sound you know that signifies hopefully a song that people

will knowing and love by this point of the record you know um i for a few years ago i was listening to an album by a band called the wombats um and it's an album called glitterbug and one of the tracks is they released like two years prior um and basically the album drops and then they come back in with this banger that everybody knows and loves and i just felt like having beyond belief kind of just come back in with this vibe just just shake the room up a little bit but also this familiarity

as well so so i love i love it and it's placed on this on this record for sure um it's a song that i know um scott specifically really loves this song because i feel like it signifies something that we've never been able to do before um you know this kind of shoegazing post punk kind of vibe you know these bands that inspire us and influence us that we never kind of got to pay homage to um so that's very much what beyond belief kind of does on the record and and um and i just

think it's just a great song you know sometimes you know you don't want to put too many frills on stuff because you don't want to just make the song like just look stupid you know but i feel like with beyond belief it's got everything he needs within it to just be a great personal passionate song really um and on on a lyrical level as well that song is about the um the concept of uh the relationship between love and death um and it basically talks about you know when when you get with somebody normally in

life you know you'll picture a future together but like the future is quite scary you know um and that can sometimes mean that love is synonymous with with fear at the same way that forever and death are as well so it's basically a song about addressing the idea that maybe you don't want to allow love into your life because you're scared of what i may bring but nonetheless just grabbing it with both hands and embracing it and it's a theme that i also talk about on the next song as well but from a different perspective

so yeah so die alone in your lover's arms is a was a title that i had for a very long time um and i feel like it paints a very vivid oxymoron you know um because obviously if you die alone and if you die in your lover's arms you're not alone but it's this kind of idea that it doesn't matter if you're with this person or not you're still alone um and for me die alone is basically like i said about beyond belief it's this relationship between love and forever and love and death but having

gone sour you know so the narrator talks about falling out of love with somebody um but on their deathbed it's too late i can't do anything i can't go back i've lived my life with you and i made the wrong choice you know um and and i think that's a fear that a lot of people have and you know it's something that i see in a lot of people as well you know quite often you'll kind of see like middle-aged couples who are together because what else are they going to do are they going to

split up and try again with somebody else no you know they're 20 years in you know so that's that's very much like a sad really really sad concept to me uh and and something that you see a lot in day-to-day life um so uh so yeah so that was always the theme with that song um and to be honest uh i i do you know i feel like this is a song that kind of resonates a lot more with the emo kind of crowd you know it's kind of a bit more like a my cam

song you know the verses are a little bit more brooding and kind of like introspective and the chorus is just ripping out there um and yeah this is one of the ones that me and scott did kind of kind of in the middle of the album really so it kind of it holds everything together um and a big thing worth talking about as well is the um the guest vocal on that song um so i'd originally written it for somebody else um and they they couldn't do it um and basically we just kind of worked

backwards from there i had a i basically said to myself like i want a duet on this album i want to push myself to write a duet basically having you know the same melody but for for a boy and a girl looking at different things through different lenses um and and yeah and basically you know i was left with the question do we push for a different guest vocalist which might be kind of weird and a little bit forced or do we not have a guest vocalist and have the lyrics be weird or the third

option was my sister who is somebody who i've sung with for my whole life uh obviously my you know my best friend somebody i love truly and and and i love her singing voice you know um and and it just it just felt right to be honest i didn't want it to be like my sister's on the album yeah you know whatever like did you like it didn't feel like something that we did consciously it was just it was just a circumstantial choice and and it totally um paid off completely and utterly like her voice

sounds beautiful and sometimes when i listen to that song i just get overwhelmed with emotion because it's like that's my sister dude you know and like and as funny as that because it's such a late point in the album as well it does feel a little bit like like a little refreshing to hear another voice as well so yeah she killed him very proud of her and that song in general so yeah so a big thing that we did with this record and something that we just loved and the idea of was having spoken spoken

word on it you know um throughout um and having this kind of beautiful kind of talking voice just kind of haunting over some of the songs so for example dai alone has it drugs in love has it um and phantoms has it and lots of people are gonna ask me about this so i'll just flat out explain it all now um basically what i wanted was to have this spoken word explaining different the greatest mistakes of my life you know and have it running through so it's like these are this is the voice of a

woman with a regret within her heart you know and they have nothing to do with the songs that they're in for the record as well so they're completely separate um and basically what i did was i went on ask reddit which is like my my second home and um and i searched if anybody ever questioned what was the greatest mistake of your life um and i pulled up three really interesting and unique um responses that people had said themselves you know so these are the greatest mistakes of these people's lives so this you know it

did feel like real um and then i basically paraphrased them as poems basically i didn't use any of the terminology these people said i just tried to put myself in that position um and then write three poems about it um so i don't think i'll ever disclose what the poems were or mean or whatever because i feel like that will definitely ruin some of the mystery but phantoms we knew we had this little it this little gap for an interlude and scott had come up with this really cool track that he'd kind of worked on

um and yeah and we had this this third poem left so we just thought let's just put the whole thing over it um so yeah so so morning song is is kind of like the last like song on the record um and probably my favorite and definitely my most emotional performance um in a holding absence [ __ ] um you know i i i feel like yeah this song is very much just a bombardment of emotion um and it ties up this constant theme of death as well and like i said it ties background to

celebration song so uh this song is basically about living your life for somebody else because somebody else wasn't afforded the opportunity to live you know when you think of all the people that have died too young in the world you know and how truly tragic it is that those people didn't have a choice and then you think about people like myself and maybe yourself you know and many people in the world that have in their lives not wanted to live that is a real juxtaposition to me having people that had no choice to live and

wanted to people that don't want to and have no ch and have a choice and there's this there's this real dysphoria between the two and and for me basically the song is about you know yeah just just respecting the fact that life is not afforded to you uh it's a privilege to to live and maybe because you don't want to live right now uh it doesn't mean you shouldn't you know um and i think it's a very very tender topic um but it just felt like something i wanted to say uh and it goes back

around to celebration song as well um you know celebration song is about it's basically about the same thing really but it's about celebrating your life rather than mourning the loss of someone else um and yeah and to me man like this song is is like if wilt wasn't about love but it was about death it wasn't about losing somebody in your life it was about losing them forever you know um and i truly think this is probably the one of the best songs we've ever written and and i'm hugely proud of it uh so so

obviously there's a very long it's a very long-winded story as to why the the album was named the greatest mistake in my life and if you want to watch that i'm sure roxanne will put the link so um but um but yeah so um basically with with this this song i knew that i knew i wanted to respect or pay respect to the song that existed the greatest mistake in my life and obviously inspired the whole thing um and we weren't really sure how to do it um do we write the melody into uh holds

absent song or do we not blah blah blah um and one of my favorite albums of all time um the black parade by my chemical romance it finishes with famous last words and then it takes a minute and then it comes back in with a song called blood and it feels like a little secret that isn't really like the last song on the album but it's just a little a little kind of afterthought you know um and i just felt like after morning song coming back down and playing the greatest mistake in my life like

a short cover of the original song and and making his sound like real you know you can hear my footsteps at the beginning you know the vinyl crackle it just feels like the perfect perfect way to end this record um you