“Cinderlight”

It started as a warm-up figure on the old upright — a Gsus2 I kept catching with an extra 9th because my fourth finger is lazy. After the sixth repetition I stopped correcting it. The lazy version had gravity; the correct version had manners.

That voicing became the harmonic fingerprint of the whole record. Every other song on Low Light had to be checked against it: does this belong in the same room as that chord? Two songs got rewritten. One got thrown out.

The lyric came from the kitchen table, no headphones, the demo mic picking up the refrigerator. “Carried your ember” was originally “borrowed your lighter” and thank goodness somebody said so.