Maria from The Water by Sunflowers for Sam

This was the third song I wrote for the EP, though it ended up being the second track in the listing. This was the track I about which I felt the most doubtful. Trying not to overthink, or overproduce, seemed especially difficult. I liked what I had written, both musically and lyrically, but I felt like it wasn't good enough. I think it had a lot to do with the notes the guitar is playing being very low, and repeating a lot. After a while of listening to it, and tweaking the mix, I realised that I was no longer in the spirit I intended, and decided to just let it be what it is. I sat to write, and record, and this was what came out. The end.

I hear a bit of Bilmuri influence in the writing of this song. Not in the instrumentation or production, but I can imagine that if he made some acoustic music, it might sound similar to the verses in this song. At first, when I played the first three notes you hear in the song, I thought of Deftones, too. Specifically, their song Mascara from their 1997 album Around the Fur. I didn't actually recall it by name, but I just looked it up while I was writing this. It doesn't really sound that similar, after all.

I accidentally wrote this song when I had my electric guitar in a weird tuning. I think all the strings were tuned down a full step, and then I tuned the bottom string back to E to record something that only used that string, and left it. When I came back to it, I played the top three strings, and was confused as to why it sounded the way it did. After that, the song kind of wrote itself.

Lyrically, there's some Ace Enders and emo influence. He said once, though I can't remember where I heard it, that a lot of what he writes about is something slipping away that you can't hold onto. It was just a throwaway line, I think, and he's written about a lot more than just that one thing, but it came to mind when I reflected on what I had written. I've been relating to that theme, though, and that's part of what inspired the EP at large.

Tracklist

2.	Maria	3:30

Lyrics

Losing what I've found,
It falls right through my fingers.
Moving without sound,
It passes through and lingers.

I don't know where to go,
Where to go.
I don't know where to go,
Where to go.

Losing who you are,
You come and go in pieces.
Moving feels so hard,
You can't be what they needed.

Credits

from The Water, released November 20, 2024

License