All 40 or so patrons were plants, prepped to generate certain thematically appropriate sounds at the right time.
Albums that work in this way are few and far between (Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band/The Beatles Imperial Bedroom/Elvis Costelloo; Achtung Baby/U2; to name only a few) where the songs don't just work thematically but the overarching sound chocks in like a puzzle piece.
If that sounds too heavy thematically, there's also "Dr. Who on Holiday," a geeky love letter to the long-running British sci-fi series complete with The Timelords (The KLF's Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty and Gary Glitterr samples.
So far, this expansion sounds cool conceptually and thematically.
Thematically, the title undersells us: School Spirits sounds like the name of a book that invokes both horror and teen romance genres and mixes them together into something zeitgeisty.
"There's always a danger of overthinking a second record but it wasn't something we discussed either stylistically or thematically beforehand," says Cook. "We wanted it to sound and to feel spontaneous.
Although musically this track sounds like it was made in 1982, thematically it's very much of 2016.
It matched the sound of The Swimmer really well I thought, and thematically it reflected the idea in the song of trying to swim against the current but being stuck and never moving forward.
The use of retro graphics and sound is a creative catalyst, Sheff says, in addition to being thematically relevant to the album's 80s childhood inspiration.
The conceit may sound cheesy, but Mr. Brinkman makes a surprisingly persuasive case that the two art forms are thematically (and in some cases, rhetorically) similar.
"I'm aware that the title sounds like a dope monster movie or something, but it speaks to the movie thematically, not in the literal sense," says Shults.
